Labour is ahead in just one poll, but it could still change things

Keir Starmer’s first lead in an opinion poll for eight months will shift the assumption that he cannot win, writes John Rentoul

Keir Starmer can afford a slight smile (PA)

Boris Johnson is mortal after all. The wonder-working, Teflon-coated vote winner might actually be paying a price for thumbing his nose at true blue Conservatives who think Margaret Thatcher’s party is that of low taxes and personal responsibility.

It’s just one poll but today’s YouGov survey putting the Tories behind Labour for the first time since January will shift the mood, even if it is followed by a string of small Tory leads. It is pointless to speculate, of course, but you cannot test a hypothesis unless you have a handful of them, so let us speculate.

It may be that the tax rise for the NHS and social care has offended part of the core Tory base. The rise in support for the Reform Party to 5 per cent (it is usually 2-3 per cent) may be a measure of that. You have to be quite well informed about politics to know who the Reform Party are – it’s the latest Farage-less guise of the Brexit Party – and that it opposes tax rises. It was also conspicuously anti-lockdown, so it may also be that it is picking up support from Tory voters who are as horrified as Nadhim Zahawi says he is by the idea of vaccine passports.

I suspect that several other things are happening at once, and that this poll is a random flicker illuminating a broader trend against the government. The vaccine euphoria that sustained the Tories, and Johnson’s personal rating, for most of the year has mostly worn off. The planned tax rise may not have moved the wider non-political electorate much – after all, the same YouGov poll finds that people are evenly divided in support of and in opposition to it – but it has drawn attention to the shocking state of the NHS. Long waiting lists and the difficulty of getting a GP appointment are bad news for the government.

The failure of Priti Patel to stop small boats landing on the Kent coast is also a big problem, giving the impression that a government that has just taken back control of immigration policy through Brexit has lost it again. Not all my predictions are right, but I did predict that one.

On the other hand, I doubt if public opinion is much moved by the withdrawal from Afghanistan, although the general impression of weakness and incompetence cannot have helped the prime minister. Nor, sadly, do I think people who don’t already care about the cut to universal credit will have changed how they intend to vote because of its imminence (although once the cut starts biting next month, that may change).

But a tax rise, the NHS in crisis and a visible wave of undocumented immigration are enough to shift public opinion against the government. Not that the official opposition is benefitting much. Labour has taken the lead in today’s poll by staying roughly where it is – it is averaging 34 per cent in the four polls taken so far this month; YouGov puts it on 35 per cent – while the Tories sink.

As well as Reform gaining ground, the Liberal Democrats have nudged up to an average 9 per cent in national polls since winning the Chesham and Amersham by-election in June, while the Greens are also enjoying a mini-surge to around 7 per cent.

Labour is merely the passive beneficiary of the Tories’ problems, but taking the lead, even if it is only in the occasional poll, will have a big effect on how Starmer is seen. He went through a dangerous phase after the local elections and the loss of the Hartlepool by-election, which was not completely stabilised by holding on to the Batley and Spen seat in the by-election in July. Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Manchester, is still maintaining his running commentary about his Mastermind special subject – how to pay for social care – while Johnson’s ascent reminds people of the new route in British politics from mayor to prime minister.

Suddenly, Starmer is not a winner exactly, but the sort of leader who might deprive the Conservatives of a majority at the next election. Labour has seen these false dawns before; Neil Kinnock and Ed Miliband both seemed set to lead the largest party in a hung parliament after stretches of small opinion poll leads.

But while the Labour Party seems electorally competitive, speculation about a change of leader is suppressed and the authority of the incumbent is enhanced. Anything that prevents Starmer from falling into the self-perpetuating spiral of “he can’t win” is enough to keep hope alive. If Starmer is lucky, Tory MPs in marginal seats will start panicking and join in the self-fulfilling chorus undermining confidence in the prime minister.

Nothing much has changed, but in politics the mood matters. Two days after a successful operation to raise taxes, the mood may now be swinging against Boris Johnson.