BBC Charlie Stayt’s brutal query to Keir Starmer on ballot rankings – however PM has comeback
Keir Starmer was confronted with a brutal question by presenter Charlie Stayt BBC Breakfast about his popularity levels sinking to -38.
But the Prime Minister stood firm and hit back with two key points. Firstly that he only cares that people judge him on whether he sticks to his promises at the end of the Parliament – and that secondly, he’s dealing with a “real mess” from the Tories and know people will think his decisions are tough.
In a tense interview, Charlie brutally said to the PM: “Why do you think you’re so unpopular? You have an approval rating of -38. Why do you think that is?”
The PM, unshaken by the question, responded: “‘I’ll be judged at the end of the five-year term on whether we delivered what we said we will deliver and that’s all that matters to me. That’s what gets me up in the morning. I came into politics to bring about that change.
“Second thing I’d say is this, we’ve inherited a real mess, and we’ve decided to take tough decisions to deal with it, to take it head on. That £22billion black hole in the economy, I wasn’t prepared to pretend that it wasn’t there, to walk past it, to make it feel good. So we took the tough decisions, and that is tough, but we did it early.
“And I think anybody watching who’s run a business, run an organisation, will know or even decorated their house, if there’s a tough job to do, you know it’s got to be done. You’re better off getting on and doing it, because things will be better once you’ve done it.”
The Prime Minister, who revealed six tough targets to rebuild Britain on Thursday, said he will not pretend “everything is going to be better by Christmas” and changing the country will take time. “I’m going to resist the temptation to say everything is going to be better by Christmas. We inherited a real mess,” he said. “The economy is broken, the NHS is completely on its knees, our prisons are overcrowded, migration is through the roof.”
Yet he insisted he wants people to “feel better off straight away” in the sense of “more money in their pocket” and pointed to recent hikes to minimum wage. Mr Starmer told the BBC the government had “no plans” for more tax hikes after October’s Budget. But he could not rule out changes in “unforeseen circumstances” such as Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2021.
Living standards flatlined over the course of the last Parliament, with real household disposable income rising by a record-low 0.3% per year – something Labour regards as a key factor behind the collapse in support for the Conservatives and a potential source of support for populist parties.
But although Sir Keir described his targets as “ambitious” on Thursday, the Resolution Foundation think tank pointed out the figures used to measure living standards – real household disposable income and GDP per capita – had risen in almost every Parliament since 1955.
