Government lacks emotional link with voters, cabinet ministers warned

Keir Starmer, pictured with Morgan McSweeney, told his cabinet that the government had to keep a tight domestic focus. Photograph: Thomas Krych/Story Picture Agency/Shutterstock

The government must find ways to reconnect emotionally with voters, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, is said to have warned cabinet ministers, in a meeting where the prime minister said they were in “the fight of our lives”.

The prime minister sought to rally his cabinet on Tuesday, telling them to ignore the polls and to prepare to take on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.