Politics Home Article | What Is Keir Starmer’s Legacy?

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Thirty per cent of people selected this option when research organisation Thinks Insight & Strategy asked what historians will consider to be the outgoing PM’s greatest achievements.

The second most selected option was getting the Labour Party elected at the 2024 general election (22 per cent), and third was introducing a social ban for under-16s (19 per cent), according to an online survey of 2,079 people carried out between 24-25 June.

However, the largest share (33 per cent) said “none of these / “don’t know” in response to twelve options put to them.

Ben Shimshon, co-founder and CEO of Thinks Insight & Strategy, said the findings indicate that Starmer has struggled to persuade the public that he has delivered in areas that were core to his premiership.

“At the moment, few of the claims Starmer made in his resignation speech are supported by the public. Only small minorities are prepared to acknowledge any improvement in the economy, the NHS, or even immigration numbers (where the official numbers do indicate significant falls),” he told PoliticsHome.

“For the two-thirds who acknowledge any achievements at all, getting Labour elected is the most established, alongside two relatively late, but relatively popular decisions: the social media ban for under-16s, and most strongly, keeping the UK out of the US/ Iran war.”

The joint fourth-most-selected achievements, at 16 per cent, were starting to repair the UK’s EU relationship and bringing down NHS waiting times. Reducing small boat crossings and closing asylum hotels was selected by just 6 per cent.

The survey was carried out after Starmer’s resignation speech on 22 June and Andy Burnham’s emphatic victory in the Makerfield by-election a few days before.

It is now almost certain that Burnham will become the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade later this month after well over 300 Labour MPs, a comfortable majority of the party, nominated the former Manchester mayor to succeed Starmer in No 10 on Thursday.

Elsewhere, the Thinks Insight & Strategy research found that a Burnham leadership boosts Labour’s chances of keeping hold of voters who supported the party at the last general election, especially those who are considering Zack Polanski’s Greens.

However, the findings also suggested that Burnham will not have long to impress the public.

Over half of respondents (54 per cent) said they would know within six months whether a new prime minister was doing a good job, and only 19 per cent said they would give them longer than that. Twelve per cent said they would know straight away. 

Just over half of respondents (51 per cent) said that if Burnham is effective as PM, they would see real improvements within a year of him entering office, while 37 per cent said it would take at least a year or two.

“The direction of travel needs to be clear within 12 months, and whatever it is, that direction needs to feel like change,” said Shimshon.