Next week will mark the end of Labour’s first 100 days in power, and the honeymoon is over, if it ever began. The Prime Minister’s personal ratings have collapsed, and the proportion of voters who now say they would vote Labour has slipped even lower than the 33.7% they won in July, the lowest vote share for a winning party in the history of the House of Commons. A great deal of gloomy prognostication about the Labour Government’s political viability has followed, but are we at risk of prematurely overstating Labour’s predicament?

Let’s start with the facts: extensive polling by multiple pollsters has detected this collapse. Sir Keir Starmer’s net favourable rating with YouGov has fallen from -3 immediately after the election to -21 today. Ipsos had him at +7 immediately following the election, which has now fallen to -14. Favourability towards the Labour Party has also taken a hit, falling from a net of +6 immediately after the election to -9 today.

Approval ratings reflect similar declines. Opinium has recorded a massive collapse in Sir Keir’s net approval from +19 after the election to -30 today. Ipsos have found a less startling but still significant decline from +7 to -21.

And we have seen a similarly negative shift in Scotland, specifically. Sir Keir’s net favourability rating with Ipsos Scotland has fallen from -10 in March to -23 today. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, whose net favourability rating sits at -27, are significantly less popular than their SNP counterparts: the First Minister, John Swinney, and the Economy Secretary, Kate Forbes, sit on -11.

Net favourability towards Scottish Labour has also fallen, from -3 in March to -13 today (the SNP is on -12). Even Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has seen his personal popularity take a hit, falling from -7 to -16.

These declines match up with an apparently poor start in government. From the racist riots to the controversial decision to means-test the Winter Fuel Allowance for pensioners and a seemingly never-ending litany of stories about donations and in-kind contributions made by Labour donors to MPs, including Sir Keir and Ms Reeves, Labour’s first few months in power have been politically rocky.

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But let’s put this all in perspective. This is only the fourth occasion on which the Opposition has won an election since 1979. Of the previous three, only Tony Blair managed to hold on to a positive net approval rating for more than a year. According to Ipsos’s long-term trends, Margaret Thatcher was underwater by October 1979, and David Cameron’s net approval rating fell from +32 in May 2010 to -14 in January 2011.

It may be that Sir Keir’s favourability and approval ratings continue to worsen. Indeed, his ratings have collapsed faster than each of his predecessors as a Leader of the Opposition who made it to Numer 10. However, Mrs Thatcher, Mr Blair, and Mr Cameron saw their net approval ratings decline below -30 before convincingly winning re-election at the end of their first term.

Labour’s gamble is that come 2029, none of the events of the past three months will matter to voters. At the May 2015 General Election, who voted based on the expenses scandal that led to David Laws’ resignation as Chief Secretary to the Treasury 18 days into the Coalition Government?

Labour's strategy is predicated on the idea that if it makes the hard choices now and lays the groundwork for a growing economy by the end of this Parliament, voters will reward it even if they may not have liked the specific decisions at the time. If Labour is right, and assuming it succeeds in that mission, its tricky start will be far in the rear-view mirror when voters elect a new Parliament.

So, let’s not jump to conclusions. We have four years before we can adequately judge the successes and failures of this government. But that does not mean there are no lessons to be learned from the past few months and the apparent collapse in Labour’s popularity.

Firstly, the public have become highly unforgiving of politicians and deeply distrustful of politics. The British Social Attitudes study published in June found that record-high proportions of people now "almost never" trust governments or politicians of any party. As Professor Sir John Curtice noted, the public is “as doubtful as it has ever been about the trustworthiness and efficacy of the country’s system of government”.

When Labour ask voters to give it the benefit of the doubt over decisions like means-testing the Winter Fuel Allowance, the response comes back: “Why should we?”

And this is the second lesson to take away from Labour’s troubles as a new government. It’s all fine and well focusing on governing - that is what it was elected to do - but politics is at least as much about communication as it is about policy and outcomes. When voters ask why they should trust Labour to deliver, the persistent message before its party conference was that the situation would get worse before it gets better, with little to no detail on when things would get better or how. No wonder voters rapidly became dejected.

The Chancellor's upcoming Budget will be crucialThe Chancellor's upcoming Budget will be crucial (Image: House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA Wire)

In opposition, Labour MPs grew fond of rejecting what it characterised as calls to give the public false hope. In government, that became a failure to recognise the need to give the public any hope at all. The upcoming Budget will be a golden opportunity to set out a path to growth and renewed prosperity that can give voters hope rooted in reality and begin to turn around perceptions of the Government.

UK Labour has time to complete that process, of course, and hopes that by 2029  it will face a much more favourable political environment. However, Scottish and Welsh Labour will need more rapid progress to win and retain power in 2026, and Labour councillors up for election in 2025 and 2026 will be eyeing the polls nervously.

It is far too early to judge this Government, but there are lessons to learn. In an era of chronically rock-bottom trust in politicians, it isn’t enough to bet on delivery. The art of political persuasion is vital, and if Labour wants to carry voters with it, it must persuade the public that Labour has their interests at heart.

Mark McGeoghegan is a Glasgow University researcher of nationalism and contentious politics and an Associate Member of the Centre on Constitutional Change. He can be found on BlueSky @markmcgeoghegan.bsky.social