
Suzy Eddie Izzard, 63, is awarded an honorary doctorate from a university at the centre of a transgender rights controversy
The stand-up comedian, 63, - who likes to go by the name Suzy but doesn't mind being called by her birth name Eddie - was honoured when she was made a doctor by the University of Sussex.
The university was at the centre of a trans storm after lecturer, Professor Kathleen Stock, was targeted in a campaign of hate and abuse.
Professor Stock, 53, was 'cancelled' and forced to leave the university in 2021 as she was accused of transphobia.
In March this year the university was fined £585,000 for its failure to uphold free speech rights of the feminist professor.
Her offences included stating in 2020 that 'the claim "transwomen are women" is fiction, not literally true'.
The stand-up comedian, who likes to go by the name Suzy but doesn't mind being called by her birth name Eddie, was honoured when she was made a doctor by the University of Sussex
She also said 'spaces where women undress and sleep should remain genuinely single-sex in order to protect them'.
The fine was issued by the Office for Students (OfS), which criticised its policy statement on 'Trans and Non-Binary equality'.
It said Sussex's requirement to 'positively represent trans people' and an assertion that 'transphobic propaganda [would] not be tolerated' could lead staff and students to 'self-censor'.
It is the largest ever given to a university, though Sussex has vowed to challenge the OfS findings legally.
Suzy Izzard as well as politician, Sir Ben Bradshaw, and four other Sussex alumni received honorary doctorates as part of the university's summer graduation ceremonies.
The stand-up comedian, activist and actor said: 'It is an honour to be conferred this doctorate in recognition of my work as an actor, comedian, my activism and charity work over the years.
'It is even more special that this is being awarded by the University of Sussex as this is the county in which I grew up in and one which holds a special place in my heart.'
Izzard, who spent a large part of her childhood in Bexhill and Eastbourne, has been a campaigner for LGBTQ+ rights.
Her charity work includes raising £1.8m for Sport Relief by completing 43 marathons in 51 days in 2009 and a further £1.35m for the same charity when she ran 27 marathons in 27 days in South Africa, to honour Nelson Mandela's 27 years in prison.
Izzard said: 'The University of Sussex is a key and integral part of the local community, and its students go on to have inspiring careers and change the world.'
It comes after Izzard revealed she would be 'very happy to have children' and confessed she's open to falling in love again with a woman.
She previously said that she has always fancied women over men and her last known relationship was with singer Sarah Townsend.
Izzard spoke to Gyles Brandreth on the Rosebud podcast and said: 'I would be very happy to have children. But at the moment it's not there. Never say never.'
She added: 'I am trans, but I fancy women, I've always fancied women, never fancied boys or men, it just doesn't work for me.'
While discussing her love life and hopes for the future, Eddie admitted that she is not actively looking for love right now because she is 'happy' in her own company.
She revealed: 'I'm not going to go into lots of relationships. It is tricky - having relationships if you're a trans person that's going to be tricky, but I'm quite happy with my own company.'
'I'm very happy in the position that I am at the moment so I'm not looking. If someone comes along and we click very well - then absolutely.'
She continued: 'But I'm not actively going to discos.
'I do believe at some point the right person could be there and we could click.'
She also discussed the type of partner she wants in life, by saying: 'It would need to be an intelligent person, great conversation, good sense of humour, attractive.'
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The Independent
28 minutes ago
- The Independent
The Maccabees on reuniting: ‘There were years when it was like a stranger messaging'
I n a dank rehearsal room in New Cross, bathed in an eerie green light that clings to the walls like moss, The Maccabees are easing back into each other's orbit. A headline appearance at All Points East is still months away. Nearest me is their guitarist Felix White, dressed all in black. 'Any requests?' he asks me. Soon the air is thick with nostalgia. Guitars twitch and flicker. Drums roar. Then in comes the choirboy vocal, clear yet quivering, as if frontman Orlando Weeks is on the verge of an apology: 'Mum said no/ To Disneyland,' he sings. 'And Dad loves the Church. Hallelujah.' It's the first time I've heard 'Lego', from their 2007 debut album, since the south London band bowed out eight years ago. But here are all the early Maccabees hallmarks: staccato riffs, adolescent romance, tenderness wrapped inside tension. Back then, in the harried sprawl of mid-Noughties UK indie – a scene of skinny jeans, dirty dance floors and MySpace pages – they briefly seemed to be just another charming, successful young band, writing cool, funny songs about wave machines and toothpaste. Yet they were always headed somewhere else, evolving, their sound increasingly adventurous on their way to a Mercury Prize nomination, an Ivor Novello award, a No 1 record and a headline performance at Latitude. Then it stopped. Seemingly out of nowhere, in August 2016, the group announced they were to be no more, save for a series of farewell celebration shows at Alexandra Palace the following year. 'We are very proud to be able to go out on our own terms, at our creative peak,' a statement read. 'There have been no fallings out.' Fans were bereft. In the years since, details of the split have remained hazy: by all accounts, it was not so much a blow-up as a simmering of fractures and differences. The pieces didn't fit together any more. While Weeks told The Independent in 2020 that the band 'just ran out of steam', blaming the creative frustrations of working as a group, it's clear a cooling-off period was needed. 'With Orlando,' says Hugo White, a guitarist in the band like his older brother Felix, 'there were a few years we didn't speak. You'd send one text maybe in six months.' They had been together their entire adult lives. 'I was 16 when I started the band,' Hugo notes. 'I was 30 when we split up.' Keeping five people together at that age 'locked into a diary that's scheduled for the next year, all intertwined in [each other's] lives', is difficult, he says. 'And I think that kind of broke in a way.' At that point, the five of them all agree, the idea of ever getting the band back together seemed inconceivable. 'It felt final,' says Weeks, who has now released three excellent solo records. 'Extremely final,' Felix jumps in, amid laughter. 'We needed it to be like that in order to move on,' says Hugo. 'It couldn't linger around.' Felix White during The Maccabees' set at the 2009 Isle of Wight Festival (Getty) We're 10 minutes in, and the group dynamic of The Maccabees is already unmistakable – a familial rhythm of in-jokes, unspoken cues and roles that feel shaped over years. If Weeks is the reluctant frontman, softly spoken and meditative, Felix is the band's ebullient cheerleader. Brooding opposite him is Hugo, with a jaw as sharp as his humour, cracking a number of close-to-the-bone barbs about the breakup. Drummer Sam Doyle and bassist Rupert Jarvis are here, too, quieter, more enigmatic. Though the mood is celebratory, there's no doubt the split was a difficult pill to swallow. 'It was so weird because you've made such a commitment to each other from a young age,' Hugo later tells me. 'So the idea that someone wants to make music outside of that group, with other people – it's almost like a betrayal... Even though it isn't.' For Felix, the way it ended, just as The Maccabees had finally earned their place at indie's top table, was, by his own past admission, 'heartbreaking'. 'We were mid-thirties and there was a real sense of saying goodbye to a part of your life,' he told us last year. The Maccabees wasn't the only breakup Felix was going through. At the same time as those bittersweet Alexandra Palace shows, he was also parting from his girlfriend Florence Welch, of Florence + the Machine. There was so much change in the air, Felix says, that it was difficult to navigate. 'Lots of endings happening in lots of different versions of life.' But then change has always been reflected in The Maccabees' music. Just as they became more expansive sonically, with gauzy guitar textures and swirling atmospherics reminiscent of Arcade Fire, so their lyrics matured. Gone were the chewed-up Lego pieces, replaced by introspection and songs concerned with the vicissitudes of ageing. Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial. Terms apply. Try for free ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent. Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial. Terms apply. Try for free ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent. Orlando Weeks performs during the band's 2013 Isle of Wight set (Getty) On a personal level, growing up with The Maccabees, all of us more or less the same age, I've always felt a strange sense of ownership over them, as if they are my band, a soundtrack to my coming of age. I was 20, still flinging myself across sticky, student dance floors in torn Levi's, when a mutual friend played them to me just before the release of debut album Colour It In. Then, two years later, nursing a broken heart, I found myself near Felix in the crowd as Blur played the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. 'I fell in love to your first album,' I told him. There were other encounters, too, running the gamut from cringe to extremely cringe. Backstage at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2011, introduced to Hugo by a PR, I careened into fanboy overdrive, explaining more than once that 'your band changed my life'. Professionally speaking, I couldn't be trusted to be objective, either: I spent years wearing down a late, great music editor who refused to let me write about them. Eventually, she caved, and I reviewed them at Brixton Academy, not knowing it would be one of their last shows. (Headline: 'Is it time The Maccabees headlined Glastonbury?') Of course, they're not just my band. Recently, at a stag do in the Scottish Highlands, I derived immeasurable joy from watching the groom-to-be insist on playing four vintage Maccabees songs back-to-back at 3am, those time-capsule choruses still a bottomless font of bonhomie. To me, in an era of swaggering, hyper-macho indie landfill, with bands such as Razorlight and The Rifles, their music always stood apart, shimmering with warmth and depth. Evidently, Danny Boyle thinks so too. For a pivotal scene in his film Steve Jobs , he turned to the sweeping, crepuscular tones of 'Grew Up at Midnight', lifted from the band's critically acclaimed 2012 record Given to the Wild. 'We thought that was going to make us f***ing massive in America,' says Felix. 'They used the whole song at the end and we were like, 'Oh my God, we're going to America, people…'' He pauses… 'F***ing nothing. If anything, we were smaller after the film came out.' The Maccabees at the NME Awards in 2016, shortly before their split (AFP/Getty) Be that as it may, there's no downplaying the magnitude of those farewell shows, which felt part celebration, part elegy. I was there and can attest to just how emotional they were. 'There was a real sense when those last Maccabee shows happened that everyone had been, was a particular age, and it became sort of symbolic for saying goodbye to a certain part of your life – sort of early thirties,' says Felix. 'That idea of real adulthood was upon everyone, that you're definitively ending a stage of your life – and it felt like it was inside all of the rooms when we played those shows. It felt like everyone was pouring their own collective sense of goodbye into it, whatever that might be – relationships, being young, people that couldn't be there, all that kind of stuff. So it felt very heavy.' For a while, it seemed that Felix would not look back as he set off on new paths. He launched Yala! Records, wrote the cricket-themed memoir It's Always Summer Somewhere and started a cricketing podcast called Tailenders with radio host Greg James and England's all-time leading wicket-taker Jimmy Anderson. But as time passed, he realised, 'you do get to a point where you're like, actually, life doesn't last forever. If we want to do this, it could be a really beautiful thing.' There was a recognition that it would likely feel that way for their fans, too, who had felt the poignancy of their parting, and had since perhaps been doing a lot of the things that the band had been doing, like starting families and spending more time at home. 'As a Maccabee through the ages, I think you can really hear that in the music: you can hear that we're 19, you can hear that we're 24 and so on. And the gigs used to feel like that, like when we were first playing, and there used to be people hanging from the ceiling and shoes flying everywhere and all that kind of thing. And then, as we got older, it changed into something more introspective.' As we got older, it changed into something more introspective Felix White Cut to Glastonbury this year and there The Maccabees are, headlining the Park Stage, with a comeback set that weaves all those elements together. Yes, there's introspection, but also that frenetic energy; if there'd been a ceiling, you can be sure people would have hung from it – perhaps without their shoes. 'We never thought we'd be playing these songs again to anybody,' Felix said to the crowd. So how come they are, I ask? The catalyst, Hugo says, was his wedding to the author and poet Laura Dockhill in lockdown. After hiring out a pub in Battersea, he invited Weeks on the condition, he jokes, that he would sing. 'And just for the after party,' Felix chimes in, laughing. 'It's not an open invite!' And so, for the first time since Alexandra Palace, all five of them were in the same room. Their friends Jack Peñate, Jamie T, Florence Welch and Adele all performed that night. Crucially, so, too, did The Maccabees. Reuniting, says Weeks, 'didn't feel forced, because after the end of something like The Maccabees, to coordinate a meeting felt sort of contrived. Then, suddenly, there was this event that was a very obviously uncomplicated reason to all be together.' After Covid, he explains, there were tentative conversations about a reunion. Slowly, the pieces aligned. The White brothers' new band 86TVs were forced to pause their plans after Stereophonics called back their drummer, Jamie Morrison, for a tour. 'So, suddenly, there was this fallow year for them,' Weeks continues, 'and I had finished my stuff with [his 2024 album] Loja. So it was just a natural hiatus there. If there hadn't been an All Points East that felt so good, then it might easily have just drifted and not happened. But it just felt very uncomplicated again.' The boys are back in town: The Maccabees at Glastonbury 2025 (Jill Furmanovsky) Certainly, their Glastonbury set had a natural ease and coherence. 'The thing that I was really noticing was that me, Land [Orlando] and Hugo all used to do this thing where we'd all move at the same time, like unintentionally choreographed,' says Felix, when I meet him and his brother again a few weeks after the festival. 'You'd do two steps forward, stand still, three steps back, and you feel everyone do it at the same time. Like, weird, telepathic, synchronised. And here we were doing it again.' Falling unconsciously into step with one another without even speaking, he says, was 'so weird... even beyond the playing, like it was in your body somewhere'. Beforehand, though, 'I was f***ing nervous,' says Felix. 'And the TV thing really does heighten the whole experience.' 'You can't really get a more high-pressure scenario,' agrees Hugo. They'd been calm in the days leading up to it, but that changed on the day, explains his brother. 'Land had this thing in his head where he was saying randomly, sporadically, with no context, how nervous he was out of 10. So you'd be having a chat, and he'd suddenly go 'seven', and then half an hour later, it'd be 'six', and then 'nine'.' Nerves aside, the band were thrilled with how it went. 'I didn't come down from it for days,' says Felix. The set was capped by an appearance from Welch, now back with Felix, for a rendition of her galloping 2008 hit 'Dog Days Are Over'. 'It was a rehash of what we did together at the wedding,' says Hugo. 'As soon as she sings in a room, it changes. She has that thing where she changes the atmosphere in the inner space, and it's really rare.' The whole process was very different from the classic rock cliché of 'putting the band back together' – rebuilding relationships took time. 'We'd meet up with our kids on the South Bank,' says Hugo. 'Stuff that is so far from how we would have spent every day. After a year of not speaking or whatever, you know, you go for a coffee and walk for an hour. Hugo White: 'Florence has that thing where she changes the atmosphere in the inner space, and it's really rare' (Getty) 'Obviously, it's different now,' he adds, 'because Land lives in Lisbon, but things are just back to how they were. And there were years where it was like a stranger messaging you.' Of course, there have been seismic shifts in the musical landscape since The Maccabees formed in 2004 over a love of The Clash and the BBC series Old Grey Whistle Test, which featured punchy, angular performances by the likes of Dr Feelgood and XTC ('You can see why it looked fun to play fast,' says Felix). These days, the industry is 'less focused on bands', says Hugo. 'People are creating these things on computers. Because it's cheaper, it's easier. It doesn't require the same effort as five individuals that connect in a certain way to be able to create something.' Jarvis agrees. 'It's so much more expensive to just be a new band. Back when we first started, we'd chuck in a fiver each to go and spend four hours rehearsing, [but] that doesn't get you anywhere nowadays,' he says. 'I feel very sorry for the new bands because of that, and there's a lot less new bands. You really notice that – there are fewer venues, fewer nights out, fewer things going on for bands to form a scene.' As the fashions of the scene that spawned The Maccabees in the indie sleaze era made a comeback, Weeks saw his past life through a new lens. 'We must be far enough away from that moment to look back at those pictures with a kind of giddiness,' he says. 'The colours and the weird asymmetrical haircuts and plimsoles and acrylic Perspex dangly little earrings and all of those things that, at the time, didn't feel nearly as cool as looking back at photos of The Clash. But we're far enough away from it now that it owns its identity.' The tribalism of the era, when you could tell which aisle of HMV a person would head to just by their hairstyle, holds a romantic pull for the band. 'There was still so much DIY-ness about it all,' says Weeks. 'There was more of a look, a cohesiveness of aesthetic.' Felix recalls being at a metal bar in Camden recently, 'and they've all got a look. That made me feel really nostalgic and jealous thinking, oh, I can't remember being in a place where everyone's got this code that makes them all sort of connected.' Felix White (far left): 'We spent two and a half years in full-on mania making 'Marks to Prove It'' (Jill Furmanovsky) Though the average fan's taste may seem more diverse than ever, Hugo wonders if something was lost in the transition to pick-and-mix fandom in the streaming era. 'You used to buy one album and listen to that until you got another album. [Nowadays] you don't have to listen to one album.' He stops himself and laughs. 'Do they even listen to an album? You just dart between songs like social media, scrolling through things.' The Maccabees seem conflicted about social media generally – especially its demands for self-promotion. 'When Marks to Prove It came out in 2015,' Felix recalls, 'we had a long conversation about whether we should even put on the Instagram that the album's out. We spent two and a half years in full-on mania making this record and it was generally like, is it naff to say the album is out today?' 'When you think what kids like the young artists now are expected to do, it's just, like, mind-blowing in comparison to how things worked for us,' Hugo says. 'We were so fortunate to be able to make stuff as a group of people and not be in this constantly competitive environment.' 'Just being not part of promotion,' Weeks marvels. 'Yeah, it was always someone else in control,' says Doyle. 'Deliver the artwork and they would promote it by getting posters up or whatever it was,' adds Hugo. I'd love to have seen Nick Drake's Instagram. Imagine him asking people to swipe up and share Felix White The sort of 'savviness' that self-promotion requires was not what set them on their way, notes Weeks, picking out current bands he likes – Divorce, Caroline, and Black Country, New Road – who have 'accidental alchemy' but also manage to be engaging on Instagram, without having to lay bare their 'private, inner workings'. 'I'd love to have seen Nick Drake's Instagram,' says Felix, laughing. 'Imagine him asking people to swipe up and share.' It's clear that as they prepare to play All Points East, headlining a bill that includes Irish sensation CMAT and indie stalwarts Bombay Bicycle Club, laughter and good vibes have returned to The Maccabees. 'Everyone's in a good headspace and connecting with each other, and that's allowed it to be stronger,' notes Hugo. Which raises the question: will there be more music from The Maccabees in their forties? 'Do you think that means we would make better music or worse music?' asks Felix. It'll be a different stage of life, for better or worse, I reply. 'It'll be slower,' laughs Hugo. 'There's a good feeling about it,' Felix says, with a wry smile. 'It's tempting…' The Maccabees headline All Points East on 24 August in Victoria Park; last tickets are available here . Reissues of their albums 'Colour It In' and 'Given To The Wild' are released on limited edition vinyl on 22 August. You can pre-order here


The Independent
28 minutes ago
- The Independent
Could this be the way Starmer placates his revolting MPs?
Keir cannot afford another fiasco like welfare,' one Starmer loyalist told me, recalling the government's humiliating climbdown on proposed cuts to disability benefits after a revolt by Labour MPs. The prime minister knows the episode showed that his way of governing is unsustainable. He is consulting people widely this summer about how to turn things round. There's a fierce internal debate taking place. In Keir Starmer's right ear, Morgan McSweeney, his influential chief of staff, tells him to focus on wooing back voters in the red wall from Nigel Farage. In his left ear, soft-left cabinet ministers urge a more progressive approach to woo centre-left voters who have deserted Labour for the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. They argue that these lost voters outnumber defectors to Reform by a margin of three to one. The soft left's allies in Downing Street want Starmer to emulate Bill Clinton, who fought back against a right-wing populist – Newt Gingrich, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives – after a rocky start to his first term in 1993. One minister admitted: 'There is a battle over the direction of the government. There is only one person who can resolve it. Keir has got to decide for himself – based on his values, who he is, who he wants to be.' The left-ear whisperers want the PM to trust the instincts that are serving him well on foreign affairs and apply them to the domestic agenda, too. Starmer appeared to be tacking leftwards when he told Tom Baldwin for the paperback version of his biography, published on Thursday: 'We have to be the progressives fighting against the populists of Reform – yes, Labour has to be a progressive party.' He has hinted that he wants to tackle child poverty by scrapping the two-child benefit limit. The PM has nodded to Labour critics who argue – persuasively – that his government has sometimes acted left but talked right, and that it's no wonder, therefore, that it gets little credit from progressive voters. He said that issues such as clean energy, nationalising the railways and increasing the national minimum wage should be shouted louder from the rooftops. 'We should show we're proud of all that,' he told Baldwin. Starmer views this as part of 'telling a better story'. But you can only tell one if you know the direction in which you are heading. The battle isn't over yet; I'm told McSweeney is not convinced about a shift to the left. His critics say the shortcomings of attacking Reform head-on were illustrated when the science secretary Peter Kyle claimed Farage was on the paedophile Jimmy Savile's side in the heated debate over internet regulation. The attack line was reportedly approved by No 10, but it backfired. It was the sort of smear we might expect from Reform. The lesson for Starmer: Labour can't 'out-Farage Farage', and the public will vote for the real thing if Labour tries to look like Reform-lite. Allies of McSweeney believe the red wall will decide the next general election, so Labour's primary pitch must be to the white working class. His internal opponents insist that trying to re-run the 2024 election triumph, McSweeney's greatest hit, will not work next time. They dispute the idea that Labour 'won' the north and the Midlands last year, saying that it reaped the benefit of a split on the right between the Conservatives and Reform, and that Labour regained seats seized by the Tories in 2019 mainly because Tory voters switched to Reform. At the next election, Farage will likely hoover up the right-wing vote. Crucially, the left vote will be split this time – inflicting deep damage to Labour unless Starmer can appeal to left-of-centre voters. He won't do that by tacking right, cutting benefits for the disabled and pensioners or aping Farage. For Starmer to win a presidential contest against the Reform leader, being the anti-Farage candidate will not be enough: he will have to offer progressive voters more than he has offered them so far. Another reason why Starmer should listen to the buzz in his left ear is that the new socialist party launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana will present another alternative to disenchanted Labour voters. It already has 600,000 registered supporters. Starmer won't lurch to the Corbyn hard left – and rightly so. But the sensible decision he should make this summer is that it's time for Labour to live up to its name and its values, and stop pretending to be something it is not.


The Independent
28 minutes ago
- The Independent
Starmer needs to listen to us, says Labour MP who quit government over welfare cuts
Sir Keir Starmer needs to listen to his own MPs, an ex-Labour frontbencher who quit her role over plans to slash benefits has said. Vicky Foxcroft, who dramatically quit as a government whip in June, said ministers need to 'properly engage' with Labour backbenchers after a massive rebellion forced the government to abandon key aspects of its benefits reforms. Ms Foxcroft said she was 'really concerned' about the negative impact the proposals – which were later abandoned – would have on disabled people. 'There was some quite bad cuts to disabled people's benefits suggested, particularly around Personal Independence Payment (PIP), and having to have four points before you would be able to access the benefit. 'And I was just really concerned about that. And, you know, at that point, I didn't feel that I could support it and didn't feel that I could go out and whip for it and get other MPs to do the same', Ms Foxcroft told GB News ' Gloria De Piero. She said she had 'sleepless nights' in the lead-up to her decision to resign, saying it was 'really difficult and I really would rather not have had to do that'. 'I was actually having a hard personal time at that time as well, with my dad passing away quite suddenly. And so, you know, I had the stress of all of that, but also I was really worried about these proposals, and I really spoke to lots of people about what my concerns were around it. 'I had some sleepless nights, it plays on your mind the whole time', the MP for Lewisham North added. Asked what the government could do differently next time, she said: 'I think it's really important to listen to MPs. MPs are out in their constituencies. They're meeting with people. You know, when they're raising concerns it is coming from what people are worried about. 'It's really important that that engagement takes place in the future. And properly takes place.' But Ms Foxcroft also insisted that the government can turn around its fortunes, despite a poor performance in the polls, with Reform UK surging ahead. 'We've got quite a few years until a general election, and we are doing a lot of good things in Parliament, the Renters' Rights Bill, the Employment Rights Bill, the Football Governance Bill, but at the moment, some of this stuff is just bills in parliament. 'What we need is people to really feel the difference actually, genuinely in their lives.' It comes amid growing concern over the direction of Sir Keir's government from voters on both the left and the right, with the prime minister's approval rating hitting an all time low earlier this month. His support among the public reached new depths of minus 43 after the £5bn welfare U-turn, according to polling published last month. The survey, first reported by The Sunday Times, also found that just a year after coming to power, seven in 10 voters think Sir Keir's government is at least as chaotic as the Tories' previous term.