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4 days ago
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Keir Starmer is towards the rightwing of Labour members of parliament, according to a study of the political positions of the MPs from every major party.
The prime minister is less leftwing than almost all of his 401 Labour colleagues, according to the research by Chris Hanretty, a professor of politics at Royal Holloway, University of London.
The study also shows the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, sits to the right of her party, with a score that puts her political position closer to Nigel Farage, the head of Reform UK, than most of her own party.
Hanretty told the Times: “Before Brexit, I would have said it was normal for prime ministers to be more centrally located than most of their party. [David] Cameron was to the left of the Conservative party, just as [Tony] Blair was to the right of the Labour party.”
Hanretty and his team compiled the results by asking 1,006 local councillors to compare their MPs and situate them against party leaders. They carried out the same study last year, but this is the first time that the political opinions of most current MPs have been charted in this way, given that more than half of them were elected for the first time this year.
MPs were rated on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being the most leftwing and 100 being the most rightwing. Independent MPs were not included.
Labour’s Nadia Whittome and Diane Abbott came out as the most leftwing MPs from a major party, with a score of 4. Reform UK’s Rupert Lowe and the Conservatives’ Suella Braverman were judged to be furthest to the right, with a rating of 95.
Starmer’s rating of 48 puts him roughly in the centre of the Commons, but to the right of almost his entire parliamentary party.
He is slightly further to the right compared with the same study last year, a possible reflection of decisions his government has taken in its first few months, including removing winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners and refusing compensation for Waspi women.
Parliament as a whole has moved decisively to the left since the same time last year, thanks to Labour’s landslide election victory as well as significant gains by the Liberal Democrats, who are judged to be almost exactly as leftwing as their Labour counterparts. The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, is seen to be significantly more leftwing than Starmer, with a rating of 37.
Badenoch is seen as one of the most rightwing MPs in parliament, with a score of 88, putting her well to the right of most of her Conservative colleagues and just two points to the left of Farage. Her predecessor, Rishi Sunak, sits in the middle of his party with a rating of 77.
Since taking over as leader of the opposition, Badenoch has taken relatively few policy positions but has said the previous Conservative government “talked right but governed left”. She has praised Argentina’s radical rightwing president, Javier Milei, and repeatedly criticised British institutions for examples of what she deems to be “woke” ideology.
However, she has spent the last few days rowing publicly with Reform, accusing the rival party of faking its membership numbers and reportedly urging GB News to stop giving Farage so much airtime.
Hanretty said: “Judgments are invariably personal, but these measures should give similar results if you were to repeat the exercise tomorrow.”
