Just how bad are the opinion polls for Keir Starmer?

Boris Johnson is enjoying a ‘vaccine bounce’ in the popularity stakes, but, says John Rentoul, it is unlikely to last

Keir Starmer: the British public has not yet decided what to make of him (Getty Images)

Two new opinion polls yesterday, from Opinium and Deltapoll, put the Conservatives nine percentage points ahead of Labour, by 45 per cent to 36 per cent. This suggests that Keir Starmer has made some progress since Jeremy Corbyn recorded the worst defeat for Labour since 1935, but not much.

Indeed, because the constituency boundaries are likely to be redrawn by the time of the next election, removing the bias in the system that benefited Labour last time, a nine-point Tory lead would probably result in another majority of about 80 seats for the government.

However, the picture is not necessarily as gloomy as it seems for the leader of the opposition, who has just marked his first year in post. He told The Sunday Times in an interview published yesterday: “I said to the team in December, we’re going to see a vaccine bounce for the government. It’s an incredible feelgood factor.”