Starmer Ratings – Part 2

• Our Starmer Ratings rank each Labour MP on a series of measures including their voting record and public pronouncements.
  • This enables us to see where the government could lose its majority – if every MP in each bucket from the left of the diagram to the bucket marked -1 were to vote against:

• Following a poor set of local election results (Labour lost the same proportion of councillors as the beleaguered Conservatives) and concomitant plunging of Labour in the opinion polls, MPs are becoming more uncomfortable with the direction of travel of their party, prompting some to become more vocal.
  • The “Labour Red Wall Group” of MPs issued a statement on Tuesday warning “our voters have told us loudly and clearly that we have not met their expectations” and asked for strong leadership from the PM, “responding to the issues raised by our constituents, including on winter fuel, isn’t weak“.
  • In a clear signal to the disquiet over Reeves’ choices as Chancellor, they demand a “Breakaway from Treasury orthodoxy“. 
  • This was followed up yesterday by a letter to the Guardian signed by 42 MPs warning “without a change in direction” that the government’s proposed welfare and disability benefits cuts would be “impossible to support“.
• Although the rebellion may not come to pass, either due to the government tweaking policy, or MPs abstaining rather than actively voting against the bill, we can use this data to determine the scale of disquiet against the Prime Minister.
• The chart below shows Starmer Ratings for Labour MPs with signatories to the letter highlighted in orange:

• Our analysis shows that potential rebels are building beyond the -1 bucket, demonstrating the widening discontent towards the government as its fiscal framework forces the Chancellor to take decisions that were not part of the party’s core manifesto.
• This pressure will persist given the huge pile of Gilts that need to be issued alongside the absence of a plan to create productive growth. 
• In the end, either the Labour Party or the Chancellor will break. 

++ Thank you to our intern Tom Berey for his excellent analytical work on this topic ++