U.K.'s Liz Truss has a net approval rating of -61 percent: Poll
The Liz Truss era is off to quite the disquieting start.
According to a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll released Monday, Britain's new prime minister has a net approval rating of negative 61 percent, down 13 percentage points from a similar poll last Thursday. Only 9 percent of respondents approve of her overall performance, while 70 percent disapprove.
Truss is underwater even within her own party, with 67 percent of 2019 Conservative voters disapproving of her performance. "Among those who would vote Conservative now, her net approval is -15 percent," R&WS notes.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Meanwhile, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is seeing a bump in his approval rating, which jumped 3 points from last Thursday to a net positive 8 percent, R&WS reports. Starmer also leads Truss "by 47 points on who would be the better prime minister at this moment — larger than any lead Starmer had held over [former Prime Minister Boris Johnson] before Johnson resigned."
Truss was named Conservative Party leader and the next U.K. prime minister in early September, following an internal party election in which she prevailed over former finance minister Rishi Sunak. She replaced the outgoing Johnson, who stepped down in the wake of numerous scandals, including the COVID-19 protocol-flaunting controversy known as "partygate." And though many expected the start of Truss' term to be turbulent, "few were prepared" for her policies to, after just six weeks, trigger a "financial crisis, emergency central bank intervention, multiple U-turns, and the firing of her Treasury chief," writes The Associated Press.
The poll was conducted Oct. 16 among a sample of 2,000 eligible voters, and its margin of error for the full sample is ± 2.19 percentage points, with a 95 percent confidence interval.
-
ICE’s facial scanning is the tip of the surveillance icebergIN THE SPOTLIGHT Federal troops are increasingly turning to high-tech tracking tools that push the boundaries of personal privacy
-
‘My donation felt like a rejection of the day’s politics’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Trump wants a weaker dollar but economists aren’t so sureTalking Points A weaker dollar can make imports more expensive but also boost gold
-
EU and India clinch trade pact amid US tariff warSpeed Read The agreement will slash tariffs on most goods over the next decade
-
Israel retrieves final hostage’s body from GazaSpeed Read The 24-year-old police officer was killed during the initial Hamas attack
-
China’s Xi targets top general in growing purgeSpeed Read Zhang Youxia is being investigated over ‘grave violations’ of the law
-
Panama and Canada are negotiating over a crucial copper mineIn the Spotlight Panama is set to make a final decision on the mine this summer
-
Why Greenland’s natural resources are nearly impossible to mineThe Explainer The country’s natural landscape makes the task extremely difficult
-
Iran cuts internet as protests escalateSpeed Reada Government buildings across the country have been set on fire
-
US nabs ‘shadow’ tanker claimed by RussiaSpeed Read The ship was one of two vessels seized by the US military
-
Maduro pleads not guilty in first US court hearingSpeed Read Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty to cocaine trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracy
