A new narrative began at the start of the year, pushed by senior government figures including the Prime Minister, linking the populist right, especially Reform UK, to ‘vaccine scepticism’. Starmer’s remarks followed an outbreak of measles at the start of the year, described as a ‘surge’.
It was a striking intervention by Starmer. Public health scares are rarely framed in such overtly partisan terms. And the data does not support the sense of catastrophe that ministers are now promoting.
Start with vaccination rates. The uptake of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine has slipped slightly in recent years, but the long-term trend hardly suggests a system in collapse. National coverage currently stands at around 88.9 per cent according to the UK Health Security Agency. That is below the peak of almost 93 per cent recorded in 2013-14, but it remains significantly higher than the levels seen in the early 2000s.
Indeed, the real crisis occurred in 2003, when vaccination coverage fell to just under 80 per cent following the panic sparked by the now-discredited claims of Andrew Wakefield. Compared with that episode, Britain’s current vaccination environment looks relatively stable.
The case numbers tell a similar story. Britain did experience a spike in measles in 2024, when roughly 2,900 cases were recorded. But the following year saw a sharp fall, with fewer than 1,000 confirmed infections in 2025.
So far this year the total stands at just 195 confirmed cases. Even if that pace continued for the rest of the year – and measles cases tend to peak early in the calendar – Britain would end 2026 with something in the region of 936 cases nationwide. That would be below the number for last year.
Much of the alarmist coverage stems from a modelling paper produced by the UK Health Security Agency exploring hypothetical outbreak scenarios. In its worst-case model, a major outbreak in London could involve between 40,000 and 160,000 infections.
But modelling scenarios are not predictions. The same document makes clear that, on the basis of current evidence, the risk of a widespread measles epidemic in Britain is low.
What the modelling actually anticipates is something much narrower: localised outbreaks in communities where vaccination rates are lower, including some migrant populations and international travellers. Crucially, the report suggests these outbreaks are unlikely to spread widely across the general population.
None of this means measles should be dismissed. Vaccination programmes depend on sustained public confidence and high uptake. But that is precisely why the government’s approach is questionable.
Turning a manageable public-health issue into a political weapon – particularly by tying it to partisan arguments about Reform or the populist right – risks doing the opposite of what ministers claim to want. It transforms vaccination from a broadly shared civic responsibility into another front in Britain’s culture wars. It is an odd strategy for a government led by Keir Starmer, who came to power promising to lower the political temperature.
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