Today marks three years since Keir Starmer won the Labour leadership, and the Times has published new YouGov polling to reflect how the public think he’s doing. The good news is more voters now think he’s changed the party for the better in the last 18 months, going from 20% to 33%. The bad news is nearly half still don’t know what he stands for, with 47% saying he’s done a bad job of setting out a vision since becoming Labour leader.

The latter figure is an improvement on September 2021 data – when 60% said he had not laid out a clear agenda – possibly because he changes his agenda to whatever polls better. The dilemma facing swing voters after 3 years is they don’t really know what Keir really believes, whether it is nationalisation or trans identity issues. Whilst 22% public said Starmer had been “a great or a good leader of Labour”, that’s less than the 28% who say he’d been “poor or terrible“. 41% also felt he had “not made any real difference” to the party since taking over…

Starmer himself tells the Times he will be “completely ruthless” in his pursuit of power, and that has required making some tough calls, like having to “take a decision” on Corbyn. A decision which involved pretending he’d “never” called Jeremy a friend…