Keir Starmer has warned ministers the government must reconnect emotionally with voters, as the PM told cabinet they face “the fight of our lives”.
In an attempt to unite his cabinet on Tuesday, the prime minister instructed them to disregard the results and get ready to face Nigel Farage's Reform UK.
However, according to insiders, chief of staff Morgan McSweeney told ministers that the government needs to use the three Es, emotion, empathy, and evidence to win back voters' faith.
According to one source, McSweeney cautioned about the government's "deficit in emotion," but a No. 10 source refuted that claim.
It is believed that cabinet ministers have voiced reservations about the government's capacity to engage voters. Despite the fact that the prime minister's new year's plan has already been thwarted, Starmer claimed that Labour could win the next election if they continued to focus on the expense of living.
Starmer, who was plagued by leadership rumors in the last few months of the previous year, declared that he would "relish" the battle against Reform and that he had great faith in his cabinet.
For the first time since the general election, the Conservatives are ahead of Labour in the most recent YouGov poll. Both parties are behind Reform, with Labour at only 17%.
Ministers were shown a presentation that compared Labour's poor poll results to the declining popularity of other administrations after they took office and advised them not to panic.
However, sources claim that there were no direct comparisons between the current government and past administrations in the presentation. Due in part to the impact of a new party controlling the polls, Starmer's ratings are at an all-time low for a new administration.
Although Trump's victory played a significant role in the latter two, Starmer said No. 10 strategists were closely examining the reelections of center-left governments in Norway, Canada, and Australia and how they restored their popularity by concentrating on the cost of living.
Questions about Greenland's future and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, who has been indicted in New York since being captured by US troops, dominated the prime minister's Monday visit to Reading, which was intended to draw attention to frozen bus and train rates.
Starmer informed his cabinet that the government needed to maintain a strict domestic focus after traveling to Paris on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the "coalition of the willing" on Ukraine.
“A Labour government renewing the country or a Reform movement that feeds on grievance, decline and division,”
he said.
“They want a weaker state, they want to inject bile into our communities, they want to appease Putin. This is the fight of our political lives and one that we must relish.
I do not underestimate the scale of the task. But I have no doubt about this team. Governments do not lose because polls go down. They lose when they lose belief or nerve. We will do neither.”
Attending cabinet, Lucy Powell, the new deputy leader of Labour, expressed her excitement about
"helping to tell the story of whose side we are on."
In addition to helping MPs become "leaders in their communities" and learn how to profit politically from changes made by the government, for which MPs have so far received little credit, Powell informed MPs on Monday night that the party would adopt a "incumbency first" model to protect MPs at the next election rather than targeting seats.
In the midst of ongoing dissatisfaction with Starmer's leadership, she also advised MPs to cease infighting during the first parliamentary Labour party meeting of the year.
Workshops on how to take credit for local improvements or policies that directly benefit constituents that have been implemented by the Labour government, such as frozen rail fares, local community and high street funding, and the extension of the warm home discount, will be provided to MPs by Labour HQ organizers.
“It’s a big switch organisationally and politically,”
a Labour source said.
“There’s tools and training the party is providing but Lucy and Anna Turley [the Labour party chair] are leading some political work about what else is needed and how MPs can support and share best practice.”
Powell warned the PLP gathering that "dark forces" did not want a Labour government to be successful and that the government should talk more openly about its accomplishments.
“We’ve got a big argument to make and win. That Labour is on the side of ordinary people addressing the cost of living crisis, rewiring the country in the interests of the many not the few, taking on the vested interests, holding the powerful to account,”
she said.
What controversies surround Morgan McSweeney?
Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, has faced multiple difficulties, primarily around his once part with Labour Together, briefings against press associates, and his political judgment on movables .
McSweeney innovated Labour Together, which was fined£ 14,250 by the Electoral Commission in 2021 for failing to declare over £800,000 in donations including £730,000 while he was still director; rightists indicted him of using a" false reason" of executive oversight to mislead the controller.
He was the last Starmer counsel pushing to retain Peter Mandelson as US minister amid a reproach over Mandelson's undisclosed Epstein ties and once undeclared loans, drawing review for poor judgment and factional favoritism