There’s only one way for Labour to get out of the doldrums – start delivering

Keir Starmer’s “new” government already feels like an “old” one. There is no precedent for an incoming government losing so much support so quickly.

At this stage after Labour’s previous landslide in 1997, the party had put on 10 points in the opinion polls, and Tony Blair was still in his “walking on water” phase, with a net satisfaction rating of plus 34 per cent. In contrast, Starmer’s net approval rating (when voters are asked if he is doing a good job) has slumped from plus 11 per cent to minus 38 per cent since last year’s general election.

Labour’s projected share of the national vote in last Thursday’s local elections (20 per cent) was 14 points down on the general election and Labour’s worst since 2009 – a year before it was booted out after 13 years in office.

For Starmer, the “mid-term blues” that afflict all governments have become the “first-year blues”. It seems he is warming to a cabinet reshuffle, the classic mid-term trick of a tired government, though in my experience it rarely makes much difference.

Last Thursday’s dire local election results highlight mistakes still too painful for Labour to admit, notably Rachel Reeves’s disastrous decision to means-test the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance. “It has become symbolic of this government,” one minister admitted. Some backbenchers even call it “our poll tax” – the flat-rate council charge that contributed hugely to Margaret Thatcher’s downfall in 1990.

Withdrawing the winter fuel allowance from 10 million pensioners has proved a great unifier, but not in the way the chancellor wanted. Opposition to it unites soft- and hard-left MPs and the Blue Labour faction on Labour’s right – dangerous for Starmer. Among the public, it unites Labour voters who have drifted off to Reform, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, who all list it as one of the top three reasons for their defection.

Despite Downing Street’s denials that a U-turn is on the cards, I suspect a tweak is coming this autumn.

Amid an intense post-election debate, gloomy Labour MPs are divided among themselves. Loyalists back Starmer’s rather careless pledge to go “further and faster” (a more contrite “We are listening, and learning” would have been better). Others seek a shift to the right to combat the “Farage effect”, with a tougher line on immigration. Soft-left MPs want Reeves to change her fiscal rules and raise taxes to head off a second round of welfare cuts the Treasury has its eyes on. I suspect last week’s results will fuel the backbench revolt against phase one when MPs vote on cuts to disability and sickness benefits.

Former transport secretary Louise Haigh voiced in public what a lot of Labour MPs say in private when she urged the government to “rip up” its “self-imposed tax rules” not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT. She is right to call for “an economic reset”, also demanded by a 45-strong red wall group of Labour MPs, but Starmer is wary of breaking his party’s manifesto promises.

Labour MPs pressing for a rightward shift will be cheered by a white paper on immigration due next week. But analysis of the council elections by More in Common highlights the danger of ignoring the threat on Labour’s left flank. Two in five 2024 Labour voters supported a different party; more (28 per cent) voted Lib Dem than Reform (26 per cent), while another 12 per cent backed the Greens and 12 per cent independents.

While Labour should take Reform seriously, it shouldn’t be spooked by Nigel Farage into making a Reform-lite offer. Farage would inevitably dismiss it as not enough, while it could alienate even more left-of-centre voters. Starmer needs an authentic, simpler Labour story to win back the party’s natural supporters. It’s not enough to repeatedly tell us it is standing up for “working people”; the government must show it.

Labour is appealing to different groups to try to preserve last year’s wide but shallow winning coalition, but seems to have upset everyone. The good things the government is doing are being eclipsed by bad stuff like winter fuel and disability benefit cuts, as Haigh said. No 10 is not adept enough at spotting the bad before it’s too late; it sometimes seems surprised at what ministers are doing, like Bridget Phillipson diluting the freedoms of academy schools.

Labour’s bad year might not be its nadir. Exactly a year from today (May 7), it could suffer a real bout of the “mid-term blues” in elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, with defeats at the hands of the SNP and Reform respectively. Local elections in London and Birmingham could prove tricky, with pro-Palestinian independents on the ballot paper.

However, there are a few rays of hope. In More in Common’s focus groups in Runcorn and Helsby, a day after the parliamentary by-election, Reform voters spoke of giving Labour “a kick up the bum”. People’s views in 2025 and 2026 will not be the same by 2029.

“The only strategy for us is to deliver,” one Starmer ally told me. True.

The prime minister needs to get a grip on his entire government and replace its scattergun approach with a relentless focus on the triple demand voters delivered last week: reduce the cost of living, NHS waiting lists and immigration.