By Elizabeth Piper, Andrew MacAskill and Alistair Smout
LIVERPOOL, England (Reuters) – A bumpy start, or just rather flat? Regardless, few at Labour’s annual conference in the northern English city of Liverpool are enjoying the kind of celebration they expected from the party’s first gathering since its return to power after 14 years.
Overshadowed by a row over the use of donations and cuts to winter fuel payments for pensioners, Britain’s new government is under pressure to offer a vision of hope to supporters who say that just 80 days after winning a landslide election, the party is losing the support of many Britons who lent them their votes.
Ministers are trying to offer a vision of better days ahead but four sources close to the government said they had been floored by the problems discovered, including large funding gaps and difficult decisions not taken by the previous Conservative government once it realised it would lose the July election.
A senior Labour lawmaker said new ministers were “literally finding files stuffed down the back of cabinets which the Conservatives deemed too hard to deal with”.
Facing a politics-weary public, Labour has sought to level with the country by warning that things will get worse before they get better, with tough medicine required to fix the finances.
But many supporters are wondering whether that downbeat message has been overplayed and has only allowed what sources say is a largely hostile right-wing media to fan the flames.
“We have only been in government for two months, but it feels like three years,” said Maurice Glasman, a Labour politician in the House of Lords (upper house of parliament).
“The honeymoon hasn’t lasted, there’s disaffection, a lack of clear direction, and a lack of affection from the Labour base.”
A poll by Opinium said Prime Minister Keir Starmer had suffered a 45-percentage-point drop in his popularity, making him less liked than ex-Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
With debt as a proportion of economic output at the highest levels since the early 1960s, Starmer has tasked finance minister Rachel Reeves with sorting out the public finances and to encourage business to step in with funding rather than resorting to public money to spur stuttering growth.
But for supporters who fought for Labour to win the July election, the cuts to winter fuel payments to pensioners and the promise of more cost-saving measures in the budget next month is not a message they want to hear.
GLUM CONFERENCE
For many at the conference in Liverpool, an event that should offer a chance to bask after the once-dominant Conservatives suffered their worst election defeat has been, as one party activist put it, “a bit flat”.
The dispute over how Starmer and his senior minister used donations from wealthy backers to buy clothing, host parties and enjoy foreign holidays has added to the dismay.
“It has overshadowed what should have been our victory lap,” said one Labour official on the left wing of the party. “It is such an unnecessary mistake and it has been handled badly.”
But one source close to Starmer said the conference was the most positive one in years and that the furore around the donations had not distracted the government even if it had consumed more media attention than was ideal.
Labour cites several accomplishments in almost three months in office – among other things, launching a national wealth fund, ending some public sector strikes with new pay deals and starting a reset in relations with the European Union.
But the over-arching narrative that things will only worsen before they improve has done little to boost the public mood.
Matt Wrack, outgoing president of the Trades Union Congress, said the government’s message of gloom – repeatedly blamed on Conservative government policies – was “politically naive” and “fraught with danger”.
He told Reuters that Labour needed to quickly explain how it would reduce National Health Service waiting lists, improve education and make it easier for young people to buy a home rather than just complaining about its inheritance.
“If Labour doesn’t recognise this and address it then it is a major political problem and the future is pretty bleak for them, to be honest,” he said.
Labour Together, a think tank formed to take Labour back to the centre ground after it lurched left under ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn, warned the governing party in a report on Saturday that its electoral coalition was “fragile”.
“A volatile electorate and historic lows for turnout, trust in politics and vote share for the two main parties create a challenging path to re-election for this government,” it said.
The senior Labour lawmaker said voters should forgive a young administration for missteps in its first days of power.
But Labour needed to move on from the blame game soon.
“To be an effective government you have to have a theory of the state, what are we looking for,” Glasman said.
“If you haven’t got, and I don’t think they have, a real defined sense of direction, this time next year it (perception of the government) is going to be quite surreal.”
