Where Are the Public as We Head into 2026 and What Are They Looking for Next Year?
This essay is part of our New Year's series on what to expect in 2026 and can be downloaded as one compiled PDF via the download form. Thank you!
By Scarlett Maguire, Founder, Merlin Strategies
Polling and political predictions can be a risky business. This time last year Labour were still leading the polls, Reform UK were in third place, and the Greens were languishing almost totally ignored in fifth place on single digits. Now, Nigel Farage’s Party have led in more than 150 successive polls and Polanski’s Greens are at 16% in polling averages, just a hair’s breadth from the Conservatives and Labour, on 17% and 18% respectively.
However, the signs of a populist insurgency on both the left and the right were clear to see: trust in politicians was at an all-time low (only to still be decreasing further), the public were impatient for a change they were not seeing delivered and pressures on the cost of living, public services and the immigration system remained persistent.
The public finish 2025 feeling even worse than when they started. Three in four think that the UK is headed in the wrong direction, including a majority of those who voted for Labour in 2024. The economy, immigration and the NHS are the issues the public feel to be the most pressing to the country, and there is little good news for the Government on any of them.
Approval ratings on the Government’s handling of the economy are only three points off Liz Truss’ mini-budget disaster, and 80% of the public believe the Government is doing a bad job. To make matters worse, the Budget has already gone down terribly with voters. The public feel that asylum seekers and those on benefits are the groups to have gained most from the Budget, while they believe motorists, small businesses owners and ‘people like me’ to be the worst hit. Far from turning public opinion around, the Budget has only worsened Labour’s polling woes, with seven in ten expecting further tax rises to come, and eight in ten voters still expecting the economy to still be in a poor state in a year's time.
Shabana Mahmood has put in an impressive performance as Home Secretary so far, however 79% of the country still think that Labour is doing a bad job on immigration and crime, unchanged since she took over from Yvette Cooper. Labour are also not yet seeing dividends from waiting list reductions in the NHS. 72% of the public think that they are handling health badly, including 61% of Labour voters.
Save for a black swan event, these issues also look set to dominate 2026, with little opportunity for Starmer, whose own personal brand is now worse than the nadir of either Sunak or Johnson, to turn these ratings around. The public are looking for more radical and profound improvements than the Government looks set to deliver, which will only drive dissatisfaction further with Starmer’s Government.
Following polls day-to-day and week-to-week often feels repetitive and not particularly illuminating. The bigger picture can easily get lost. There are however longer-term trends worth watching.
Decreasing trust in politicians, institutions and media would all be signs that the populist groundswell is here to stay. Likewise, the percentage of Britons currently feeling that the country is on the wrong track and that they will be worse off rather than better off over the course of the Parliament. Do they continue to perceive current levels of taxation to be unfair, and does this even get worse?
In short, are the public continuing to ask for more radical change that they are not seeing from a political class they increasingly dislike and distrust? If the answer continues to be ‘yes’ then the only predictions you can reliably make for 2026 is that we will not see an end to the disorder and disruption that has characterised UK politics over the past year. If anything, things might only get more chaotic.