‘We are in danger of being the doom and gloom government’: can Starmer’s hardline strategy actually work?

In March 2022, less than a year after she was appointed shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves talked movingly about families living in poverty in her Leeds West constituency. “You look at the kids and you just think, I know you are poor,” she said in an interview with the Observer at the time. “You can see it in the school coats, especially in winter, and in the school shoes. Kids not wearing the proper school uniform, sort of a bit of mix-and-match and it is really sad.”

It was the weekend before the then Chancellor Rishi Sunak was due to deliver his Spring statement to the House of Commons. The Labour opposition was calling for urgent measures from Sunak to ease the cost-of-living crisis. “He really does need to show more empathy,” said Reeves, adding that he should announce a big increase in benefits for those on low incomes, including pensioners.

Last week on a visit to Scotland, less than two months after becoming the country’s first ever female chancellor, it was Reeves who was the one under pressure over policies that many believe lack empathy. During the trip several Labour MPs confronted her face-to-face with their worries about her announcement that winter fuel payments would have to be limited to the poorest pensioners, to save the country money.

It is a policy that – along with her and Keir Starmer’s refusal to lift the two-child limit on benefits – has drawn huge criticism, including from the leading charity Age UK. Its leaders have just written to the chancellor suggesting urgent modifications so more people on benefits can still receive the payments. The charity fears that, if the policy is implemented, its effect will be devastating for many elderly people, and for those on low incomes but just above the cut-off point, who will feel they have to suffer the cold wrapped in blankets and duvets, putting themselves at risk rather than turning on the heating this winter.

One senior Labour figure said: “A lot of MPs, and ones who you would not associate with being rebels, had some words with her about it. There is real concern that it will hit a lot of people who are already living under real financial pressures, those just above the threshold, very hard indeed. It just feels very un-Labour.”

A Labour MP added: “These people don’t go into debt. They were taught that that’s not right. They will not turn on the heating. They were brought up to believe you don’t do what you can’t afford. It is those people who we should worry about.”

Tomorrow, MPs return to parliament after a shorter than normal summer break, and already Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and the entire Labour government are feeling the political heat on a range of fronts.

“It has been mad, totally full-on,” said one Cabinet source. Fourteen years in opposition may have been frustrating, but the first two months in government have come as a total shock to many.

One senior Labour adviser, who had only a few days’ holiday over the summer, said he was so wrung-out that he would be taking immediate advantage of new laws his own government has said it will implement to give employees a “right not to be disturbed” out-of-hours.

He is far from the only one in the new administration not to get a decent break after months of electioneering, followed by the dizzying transition into power. The far right mid-summer riots forced Starmer to cancel his own holiday. His hardline response was broadly applauded as good leadership.

But stamping your mark on a new administration as a prime minister, on everything from economic policy to personnel appointments, setting its direction and installing people you really trust to positions that matter, inevitably means disappointing others. Noses have been put out of joint.

Low-level leaks aplenty have seeped out into the media, evidence of mild disgruntlement and tensions inside No 10 in these early days. Several of the Starmer government’s political appointments to civil service posts have caused resentment among those who have not been preferred, and have drawn Tory accusations of Labour sleaze. Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray is being put in the frame, mainly by a Tory press looking for faultlines.

Blame is being pinned on outgoing cabinet secretary Simon Case for having it in for Gray and, some say, “feeding” the press stories. “He should be shipped out asap,” said one Labour source. But others with longer experience of Labour feuds say that it is all small-beer stuff. “It is hardly Blair-Brown, it is just normal office politics. She is good at her job, she makes things happen, changes things. So some people aren’t happy. So bloody what? It should be like that. It is largely ­bollocks,” said one.

None of this hum of background noise has stopped Starmer and Reeves spelling out in the strongest, crudest terms their main message, their core strategy, for the first months of this government, which is increasingly attracting some more serious criticism.

On Tuesday in the Downing Street rose garden, Starmer addressed the working people of Britain with the grimmest of messages. On entering the government he and his ministers had discovered “not just an economic black hole” of £22bn but also “a societal black hole”, he said. Everything was broken from the economy to prisons. The Tories had left the country in pieces, like a pile of “rubble”.

“And that’s why we have to take action and do things differently,” he said. “And part of that is being honest with people – about the choices we face. And how tough this will be. And frankly – things will get worse before they get better.” It would not only be the better-off who would have to pay more in tax but also ordinary working people. “I’ll have to turn to the country and make big asks of you as well. To accept short-term pain for long-term good.”

Everybody at Westminster could see only too well what he was doing. In difficult economic times, blame for unpopular decisions that were coming up – particularly on tax – was being passed on to the previous government. In the process, Starmer was hoping to reap dividends for “honesty” and “strong leadership” in tough times. One slight problem was that they were messages that had been put out before, in dribs and drabs so it did not appear very new, and, perhaps more important, there was little sense of what all the pain would be for.

Related: These were not the choices I wanted to make, but they are the right choices for Britain | Rachel Reeves

One former Labour adviser asked: “You look at this and you look at the Democrats and Kamala Harris and the excitement there. Where is the excitement here now we are in office? We are in danger being the doom and gloom government.” Harris had spoken at her party’s convention in front of a slogan “A New Way Forward”. Another Labour source said: “By contrast it does all sound desperately grim. Where were the sunlit uplands?”

The Tories, meanwhile, have been piling in saying Starmer’s speech was evidence that Labour’s endless pre-election promises about not raising taxes were all lies. Mel Stride, one of the six Tory leadership candidates, said on Twitter: “It was always Labour’s plan to raise taxes and cut pensioner benefits when they came in. We pushed them on this repeatedly during the election campaign, they denied it, now they are trying to pin it on the Conservatives. It was all so predictable, and people don’t believe them.”

Reeves, writing in the Observer , appears to recognise the need to spread some more sunshine amid the gloom. She repeats the hair-shirt message, offering nothing for those pensioners fearful of losing their heating allowances or families hit by the two-child benefit cap. But there is some light at the end of it all. “We have some of the greatest minds and businesses in the world – and our determination to deliver a brighter future has not been diminished. We can restore economic stability, rebuild our public services, boost living standards, unlock growth, spread prosperity and make every part of our country better-off.”

Related: Ministers launch pension credit campaign after restricting winter fuel payments

The problem may be, however, that the public seems increasingly to be doubting Labour and its messaging, and to see them as just another group of untrustworthy politicians. Despite his handling of the riots and his rose-garden address, Starmer’s ratings two months into his time in office are on the slide. There are findings in today’s Opinium poll for the Observer that will not make pleasant reading inside No 10.

While the prime minister is hoping that his stark messaging will be seen as that of a strong and honest leader, Opinium finds that 46% now believe Starmer and Labour were not open and honest at the last election. Fifty percent think that the decisions Labour will make on where it will save money in the budget will be unfair, against 21% who think they will be fair. Starmer’s rating for likeability has dropped 12 points since late June and for being trustworthy by 11 points. His score on having “views similar to mine” has fallen by 22 points.

One senior Labour adviser who takes the overall view that the strategy of warning of tough times ahead, and blaming the Tories for imminent tax rises, is correct said that it was not without its downside and its dangers. “If there is an issue with it, it is that it looks too political, a bit cynical, and like we don’t really have a story about ourselves, about why we are running the country. We need to project our own upbeat sense of a New Way Forward.”