According to a new poll Rachel Reeves is the most unpopular Chancellor in history as more people are “struggling to cope” than what was seen in 2022 when the “cost of living started to bite.”
Reeves was the first woman to become Chancellor when Labour won a landslide victory in the 2024 general election last July.
The Ipsos pol for The Telegraph found that more that 71% of Britons are not happy with the Chancellor’s performance.
Senior director of UK politics at Ipsos, Gideon Skinner, said, “On top of continued record unhappiness with Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves’ satisfaction ratings have also hit a record low this month, the worst for any chancellor since we started monitoring in 1976.
“This comes in the context of persistent economic anxiety, with more people today struggling to cope than we were seeing in 2022 when the cost-of-living crisis first started to bite.”
Skinner said, “Historically we’ve only seen similar levels of scepticism over the government’s long term economic plans in the last years of the Major and Sunak governments, and under Brown after the financial crash.
“Meanwhile, Reform UK continue to hold a steady lead in voting intentions, helped by this frustrated desire for change and their own strengths on immigration and (to a lesser extent) on crime – though it should still be noted that many of the public do not see them – or indeed any party – as having the answers either on many issues.”
The Ipsos poll found that 66% of the public do not believe that Labour’s policies will deliver economic growth.
Skinner said that Labour’s polled this badly was back in the 1970s.
“That was a one-off nadir that they did recover from to some extent, denying the Conservatives a majority in 2010, which might be of some minor comfort to Labour,” he said.
