"Change." This one word was the slogan that empowered Labour to reach so many in July of last year. With the rise of far right parties throughout Europe, the United Kingdom stood as an outlier swinging firmly to the left. Labour won 412 of the 650 seats in the British parliament, giving it a very firm majority of 63%. This came after a huge amount of dissatisfaction with the conservatives in power from Johnson to Truss to Sunak. Labour offered, well... change. And to appeal to more moderate voters, Starmer moved away from the left-wing policies of Jeremy Corbyn and branded his party as the new, genuinely concerned, "reasonable" party.
"For a government to leave after 14 years our country with living standards worse than when they started, is absolutely unforgivable. ... they will carry on in the same way, nothing will change. So a vote for Labour is a vote to stop the chaos. ... All we ask now, humbly, is the opportunity to change our country and put it back in the service of working people," spoke Keir Starmer on May 23, with supporters holding signs with one word behind him: change. The government needed to change, and the government needed to stabilize. A change towards stability for the working class. "We are the party of wealth creation," spoke Starmer, arguing that "sustained economic growth" was the only way to improve "the living standards of working people." Labour was "pro-business and pro-worker", a "Government back in the service of you and your family."
In July 2024, Labour polled at 37.5% approval. Just one year later, that approval rating had dropped to 23.3%. The Guardian described this as "the worst of any government since 1983", even putting the previous-highest in how "John Mayor's Conservatives 9.8 points in 12 months" to shame. Labour promised to put power back in the hands of the people, yet the people are uniquely dissatisfied with Labour. So what changed? Why can't Starmer resonate with voters?
According to a poll from Ipsos in June 2024, the main issues Britons faced were:
According to an August 2025 poll, the top issues are still these four, but the order has changed:
Other issues like housing, education, defense, poverty, crime and faith in government were also significant to voters but much less. So, on each of these fronts, how has Starmer's government helped?
To start, broadly speaking, Starmer's focus seems not to be on these domestic issues as much as he should. Starmer said in June 2025 that he would "have liked to get to a better position with colleagues sooner than we did", and that his heavy focus on NATO and the Middle East, among other foreign issues, made him neglect domestic issues to an extent. Alongside this and other distractions, it's clear that Starmer's focus wasn't as aligned with "change" as his campaign promised.
On Healthcare, one of Labour's key pledges was to "Build an NHS (National Health Service) fit for the future." This service would "cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments every week", significantly increase staffing of professionals (especially in mental health), and focus on preventative solutions. But this pledge has been constantly under threat, as "NHS bosses are seeking an emergency injection of £3bn to cover unexpected costs", warning of longer wait times and rationed care otherwise. Hospital waiting lists, although having initially fallen, have increased once again, as patient satisfaction and staffing problems remained. Labour set ambitious targets that seem not to have been met in the health industry, perhaps because of the UK's recent financial problems (we'll get there.)
Another core pledge of Labour was to strengthen the Migration Advisory Committee and emphasize work migration. Labour wanted to both reduce net migration and increase protections for migrant workers. In this, it seems like they succeed: migration has been dropping. But the UK's Migration Observatory finds this would have happened anyway because of "visa restrictions from the previous government" , and secondly because international students who finished their courses in the UK are often returning back to their home nation. Ipsos finds that nearly half of Britons (a rate that has been increasing) are dissatisfied with how Labour's been handling immigration, and it's clear from the concerns that it has become an even more predominant issue. Labour has taken some actions, but clearly not enough to be noticeable or quick enough for voters to be happy with.
What about the economy and inflation? The economy has continued to be one of the most defining issues; Labour itself got into power as the party that promised to uplift the working class. And of course, if the government's finances are unstable, or the economy is struggling, every other policy becomes less manageable. If the economy is better and/or finances are better planned, commitments to immigration, healthcare, education, crime, housing and more all fall into play. Every major pledge Labour has made requires spending commitments, though! Despite not being the issue at the forefront of the minds of Britons, it seems to be the most important.
Labour's pledges emphasized how "non-negotiable" their fiscal rules were, and focused on the transparent focus on public spending. Their "commitment to economic stability" was emphasized, as well as elimination of "waste and other efficiencies." Multiple of Labour's key pledges focused on the economy through the National Wealth Fund, planning reform to help with homes and power. This notion of "economic stability" was repeatedly emphasized; finances would not be the issue voters would have with the Labour Party.
Anyway, so about finances in the Labour Party, right? Immediately after Labour took power, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the Exchequer, aka the UK's finance minister and most important official after the prime minister, discussed immediately about "a hole of 22 billion pounds (about $28 billion.)" She blamed it on the Conservative Party for making commitments to plan "knowing the money wasn't there", calling the overspend "not sustainable." The Carcetti dilemma returns, folks!
Inherited or not, closes source to Reeves say that she's been considering raising the income tax to cover this £30bn loss. But Labour promised not to do this, with an explicit pledge not to raise income tax, insurance costs, or VAT costs. Starmer has been warning of "tough but fair" decisions, alluding to the raising of this tax. It's clear that Labour is caught between a rock and a hard place, choosing between pledges like a mice in a maze choosing which path leads to cheese. To some extent, this is the Conservative Party's fault, but a combination of Labour's explicit pledges not to do this and Labour's explicit pledges that require lots of spending have made it far worse. Even though she has said she would focus on the wealthiest, it seems highly likely the middle class will suffer from this too.
In 2024, Labour had a clear motto: "change." Labour was the party of change and a return to stability, the reasonable party. But Labour seems increasingly unstable. Their commitments to certain pledges seem wavering, like their pledges of taxation as Reeves and Starmer clearly plan to forgo. Their pledges of improving finances and the economy have been put under scrutiny as well. Their pledges to improve the NHS have not worked so well, perhaps due to those same finances. And in other pledges too that aren't these major ones has Labour's decision-making flickered, as they have repeatedly watered down their Green Prosperity Plan, went farther on immigration than they said they would, focused far more on foreign policy than they said they would, and even to some extent criticized their own working class base for going on strike.
Labour emphasized stability not just in its policies but in its government. This would be the era of simplicity. Yet the party emerges in scandal after scandal. Angela Rayner wrote a letter of resignation saying that she "decided to resign as deputy prime minister and secretary state for housing ... as well as deputy leader of the Labour Party" because of a scandal involving her "property ownership" and "tax affairs." Peter Mandelson, another member, had been found to have traveled to Epstein's island with Epstein paying for it, being "sacked as the UK's ambassador to the US" for it. Dan Morris was arrested "on suspicion of rape and child sex offenses." Rachel Reeves broke the law with her failure to comply with housing laws, which Starmer called a "regrettable" but "inadvertent" error as the Tories call for her resignation. And with the "Giftgate" scandal criticizing Starmer and Labour in general of being far too connected to financial interests, (with Starmer having accepted more gifts than any MP since 2019), and a certain narrative starts to paint a picture for itself.
Labour made big pledges of systemic reform, but they never answered how to pay for it. But what if they did say they would raise taxes from the start? Would they have still garnered the same success? Labour wanted to tone down their rhetoric so that they could seem more moderate and reasonable, moving away from the more radical ideas of Corbyn. But in doing so, they failed to hold any core consistent pledges at all, the tension erupting into chaos.
But if Labour is losing support (and as we've explained, they are), where is that support going? Who do voters want to vote for instead? Again, looking at the Guardian's September poll, a clear picture paints itself. 56% of those who voted for Labour in 2024 would vote for them again. However, 44% would change their votes. Of those 44%, a third would switch to more right-leaning parties (Reform or the Tories), and another two thirds would switch to more progressive parties. Labour, the moderate "reasonable" safe-haven, has begun to fracture.
And that doesn't even account for the new challenger: Your Party, founded by former Labour leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, dissatisfied with the moderate position that he finds Labour to hold. The name itself shows the message: a party truly for you. Britain's voters still want change, and if they feel like Labour wasn't willing to make that change, they might want someone who will. And it's not like they've forgotten the fourteen years under the conservatives before them! Seeing the power vacuum in the struggling Labour has Your Party emerged, but the Guardian calls the party only "half-formed."
But British voters are dissatisfied with the current government of the Labour Party and its failure to meet its core pledges. As disapproval continues to decline (and will further decline when the income tax is finally announced as expected on Nov 26), a power vacuum awaits. Labour's failure to deliver on its promises of change and stability doesn't mean those promises themselves aren't still popular.
At the end of the day, the Labour party was always set up for failure. They promised the world, but promised they wouldn't need to pay for it. They promised stability, but promised massive change. And they promised to prioritize the workers, while preparing to tax those workers.
Because the truth is, when you promise everything, you can't promise anything.