Labour can pull this round with ‘fight of our times’, says Starmer as party conference starts
It came as fresh polling showed Sir Keir Starmer is the least popular prime minister on record
Sir Keir Starmer has said he believes Labour can “pull this round” as the party goes into its annual conference, amid growing questions over his leadership and devastating approval ratings.
The prime minister said his party, currently riven with division amid polls which suggests Nigel Farage’s party is on course to win the next election, faces the “fight of our times and we’ve all got to be in it together”.
But he added: “I think we can pull this round.”
It came as fresh polling showed Sir Keir is the least popular prime minister on record, performing worse than Rishi Sunak or John Major.
In an interview with The Times published after he arrived in Liverpool for Labour’s party conference, the PM said: “It is the fight of our times and we’ve all got to be in it together. We don’t have time for introspection, we don’t have time for navel-gazing.
“You’ll always get a bit of that at a Labour Party conference, but that is not going to solve the problems that face this country.”
He warned that the fight is “bigger than the Labour Party” because of the “sense of the division that Reform would bring to our country and the shattering of what we are as a patriotic country”.
Sir Keir also argued that the UK is facing a “fork in the road” at the next election, between Labour and Reform – while the Tories are “dead”, he claimed.
Earlier, the PM claimed Mr Farage’s party wants to “tear our country apart”, pointing to Reform’s plans to remove indefinite leave to remain for legal migrants as “one of the most shocking things” he had heard them come out with.
As he arrived in Liverpool for the conference, Sir Keir said it would be an opportunity to show Labour’s alternative to the “toxic divide and decline” offered by Reform.
A new poll from Ipsos showed that net satisfaction with the PM is at -66, the lowest satisfaction rating recorded by Ipsos for any prime minister going back to 1977.
Only 13 per cent said they were satisfied with the way Sir Keir is doing his job, while 79 per cent were dissatisfied.
The score is worse than previous lows recorded by Rishi Sunak just months before the general election (-59, April 2024), and John Major (-59, August 1994).
The polling also indicated that Rachel Reeves is the least popular chancellor since records began, with a net satisfaction rating of -56.
Her satisfaction scores are comparable to Kwasi Kwarteng in October 2022, just after his disastrous mini-budget, with a score of -53.
The poll surveyed 1,157 British adults between 11 and 17 September 2025
Meanwhile, other surveys have put Mr Farage on course to be the next prime minister, with Reform currently on track to win the most parliamentary seats if an election were held, according to both YouGov and More in Common.
In a message aimed at rallying a divided Labour against Reform, Sir Keir told The Guardian: “History will not forgive us if we do not use every ounce of our energy to fight Reform. There is an enemy. There is a project which is detrimental to our country.
“It actually goes against the grain of our history. It’s right there in plain sight in front of us. We have to win this battle.”
Labour had to “unite and fight”, he said amid speculation that Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham could mount a leadership challenge.
The former cabinet minister approaches this weekend’s crucial Labour conference with supporters talking up his prospects as a leader and potential prime minister for the party.
Mr Burnham last week offered up his biggest challenge yet to Sir Keir, saying Britain needs “wholesale change” and warning the prime minister that he risks handing Mr Farage the keys to No 10 without a major change of course.
Labour chairwoman Anna Turley acknowledged it had been “quite a challenging couple of weeks” for the party.
But she told the PA news agency that many more MPs are “frustrated” that their colleagues are already trying to topple Sir Keir.
Ahead of the Labour conference, backbench MPs and unions renewed calls to end the two-child benefit cap - setting the issue up to become a key battleground at the four day congress.
Several MPs from Liverpool, the host city, were among those who wrote to the prime minister ahead of the gathering, insisting the cap “is one of the most significant drivers of child poverty in Britain today”.
Debate over the future of the cap is among a number of areas of benefits policy where ministers could be challenged by Labour members in Liverpool.
Among those who have previously called for it to go is Lucy Powell, the former Commons leader who is the frontrunner in the race to become the next Labour deputy leader.
Meanwhile, Mr Burnham this week also called on Sir Keir to scrap the cap, becoming the latest high-profile Labour figure to call on the prime minister to change the policy, amid growing pressure from Labour MPs.
Sir Keir’s plans for a new digital ID system, unveiled in London on Friday, will also likely face scrutiny at the conference.
Senior Labour figures are meanwhile expected to set out the details of a fresh tranche of “New Towns” at the event.
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