Many prime ministers at some point find themselves in a situation where nothing they do seems to go right. It happened to Jim Callaghan in the late 1970s, to Gordon Brown in the 2000s and to every Conservative prime minister since 2019.
After barely 100 days in office, there are troubling signs that Keir Starmer’s government may be in this situation. This is a strange fate for an administration that is still meant to be in its honeymoon phase, having won a huge majority in 2024.
While pensioners protest that cuts to their winter fuel payments could shortly leave them without the wherewithal to stay warm, we hear about Starmer and others living it up, with £4,000 worth of Taylor Swift concert tickets, expensive designer glasses and fancy clothes that many Labour supporters could not hope to afford. The party’s poll ratings have plunged and Rosie Duffield has quit as a Labour MP, complaining about the “freebies” scandal.
