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Louise Thomas
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Sir Keir Starmer ended his first week as Prime Minister as popular as Boris Johnson was at the height of the vaccine rollout, a poll has found.
Some 36% of the public told pollster Ipsos they thought Sir Keir was doing a good job as Prime Minister, the highest rating for a premier since February 2021 when 37% said the same about Mr Johnson.
But conversely, just 14% of the public think the new Prime Minister is doing a bad job, well below the 41% that thought negatively of Mr Johnson in February 2021 – and the 57% that thought badly of Rishi Sunak just before he called the election.
Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos, said: “Looking at Keir Starmer’s poll ratings there are increasing signs of the new Prime Minister enjoying something of a honeymoon period during his first few days in office.”
Sir Keir’s Government as a whole enjoyed similar approval ratings, with 34% saying they thought it was running the country well and a similar proportion saying they thought it was doing better than expected.
Enthusiasm for Labour is particularly high among those aged 18-34, with 45% saying they thought the Government was doing better than expected.
That figure fell to 29% of those aged 35-54 and 31% of those aged 55-75.
Mr Pedley added: “Of course, time will tell how long such ratings last, with Starmer and his Government’s ability to deliver against public priorities likely to dictate their respective political fortunes in the long term.”
Just 16% of people thought Labour was doing a bad job running the country, well below the figures saying the same about recent Conservative governments.
The Ipsos poll surveyed 1,092 British adults online between July 12 and 15.
It comes as Sir Keir Starmer said ministers will “carefully consider” reforms proposed by the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, after its first report found British citizens were failed by the previous government during the pandemic.
Inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett has made 10 recommendations to avoid another crisis with the same scale of death and financial cost, set out in findings published on Thursday.
Among them were a requirement to carry out national response exercises every three years and the creation of external “red teams” of experts to challenge “the acute problem of groupthink” in government.
In a written ministerial statement afterwards, Sir Keir said he was “personally committed” to learning the lessons of the pandemic.
Sir Keir said: “The Government’s first responsibility is to keep the public safe, and as Prime Minister I am personally committed to each and every family that lost loved ones, and whose lives were changed forever, that this Government will learn the lessons from the inquiry.
“This means ensuring that the UK is prepared for a future pandemic, as well as the broadest range of potential risks facing our country. That is a top priority for this Government and what everyone should rightly expect from a Government working in their service.
“I would like to thank Baroness Hallett and her team for their thorough work on this report. The Government will carefully consider all of the findings and recommendations of the report in the context of the Government’s overall approach to resilience.”
