Keir Starmer is promising Britain doom and gloom, but patience is wearing thin

Analysis by Rob Picheta, CNN

Liverpool, England (CNN) — Three months after a historic election victory, it felt like the downpour at the Labour Party’s conference would never end.

Lawmakers and officials in Britain’s new governing party have been trudging through a massive conference center in Liverpool, northwest England since Sunday in sodden suits, a rumbling River Mersey as their backdrop, for the group’s first set-piece event as a governing party in 15 years.

It was supposed to feel like a celebration. Prime Minister Keir Starmer touted July’s gigantic electoral landslide in his keynote speech on Tuesday, telling his party: “People said we couldn’t do it, but we did.”

But the gathering was dampened by more than the weather. Like Britain’s rather fickle summer, Starmer’s honeymoon is a distant memory.

A string of negative stories – about ministers accepting gifts and handouts, and reported conflict within Starmer’s top team – has clashed uncomfortably with a set of joyless policy decisions aimed at stabilizing Britain’s strapped finances, many of which go further and deeper than some inside the party expected when they promised a platform of change during the summer election campaign.

It means Britain’s new prime minister is already deeply unpopular with the public, according to a batch of unflattering opinion polls that landed with a thud as Labour’s conference began.

And while his lawmakers are broadly behind his disciplined agenda, questions are percolating there too about his political judgment and ability to keep his government on message.

“It has felt a bit blunt,” a Labour Member of Parliament admitted after Starmer’s speech Tuesday, summing up the sentiment across much of conference. “It should have been more exciting,” a longtime Labour activist complained.

Starmer dangled a sliver of optimism in his speech Tuesday – promising the country “light at the end of this tunnel” – and in an effort to underline the rare display of cheer, the sun did finally emerge outside a short while later.

The speech was an important hurdle for Starmer, who needed to reclaim the reputation for focus, diligence and honesty that he spent four years building, only to see seriously fractured in three months.

But he nonetheless begins the unenviable mission of boosting Britain’s limp economic growth, and reviving its tired public services, with a fragile coalition of public support.

Starmer has insisted the latter issue will need a decade to truly fix. Unfortunately, the realities of governing are beginning to bite the Labour Party – and it is likely he will need to show some returns far sooner.

A ‘freebie’ row

Labour’s conference was trailed by a series of stories that felt uncomfortably similar to the sleaze scandals that dogged previous Conservative administrations.

Public records showed that Starmer had accepted tens of thousands of pounds in gifts from a key financial donor, including money for clothes and glasses. He had also watched his Arsenal soccer team from a hospitality box and accepted four tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert at Wembley Stadium, worth £4,000 ($5,300).

The donations are not unique for British leaders. But they were particularly surprising – and damaging – for a prime minister who spent four years painting himself as an antidote to the cronyism and coziness with donors displayed by consecutive Tory prime ministers.

No rules have been broken by Starmer or his team, but little common sense has been displayed either, and his lawmakers have noticed.

“I just think it’s indefensible,” Labour MP Rachael Maskell told CNN. “Politicians should pay their own way.”

Maskell said the decision to take gifts and donations showed “poor political and personal judgment.” She is one of few Labour MPs to publicly criticize the front bench but said she is “not alone” among parliamentary colleagues – the group that can ultimately decide Starmer’s fate were a movement to emerge against him.

The donations row was handled badly – Starmer naively fronted a reception celebrating London Fashion Week just hours after news emerged that a donor had bought his wife clothes – but it was especially harmful because it coincided awkwardly with a cut to the Winter Fuel Payment, an allowance given to retirees, to help with utilities bills.

The move to limit that benefit to those already in receipt of state support was opposed by dozens of Labour MPs, and was controversial in a country still dragging itself through a lingering cost of living crisis.

Maskell said she had been “sickened” by the timing. “People are hearing that (ministers) are getting donated clothes, and yet they haven’t got warmth themselves,” she said.

The “one rule for them, another for everyone else” slogan that Starmer attached to Boris Johnson’s premiership became the sentiment that, above any other, caused that Conservative leader – himself fresh off a landslide election win – to be dumped from office two years ago.

Starmer will be desperate to stop it from infecting his premiership too. He told conference attendees Tuesday that rebuilding the country would be “tough in the short-term,” but “we’re all in it together” – and that framing will likely be recycled in the coming weeks as he seeks to restore a reputation for integrity that was so valuable in July.

Patience wears thin

Far beyond the heavily secured gates of Labour’s conference, the country is casting its judgment as well.

The combination of Labour’s miserabilist message on public finances with the costly scandal over its own donations has contributed to an astonishing collapse in Starmer’s popularity since his election win. An opinion poll published by Opinium on Sunday found his net approval rating had dropped to the same depths as Rishi Sunak, the former Tory prime minister that Starmer routed at the ballot box 12 weeks ago.

“While the prime minister might have a world-beating new wardrobe, voters are refusing to wear his austerity drive,” James Crouch, head of policy and public affairs at Opinium, told CNN.

He pointed to a sparsely detailed economic agenda, adding: “The PM and chancellor have labored on the tough decisions, but given us relatively limited information about what those will look like. The almost sole focus on Winter Fuel Payments has made the government look like it’s unfair and out of touch.”

And they have already been forced to lighten their tone, after the barrage of gloom threatened to undermine confidence in Britain’s economy. Reeves, in her keynote speech on Monday, told attendees that “Britain’s best days lie ahead,” a useful pick-me-up after months weeks of somber addresses that blamed the previous Conservative governments for mismanaging public services and for a financial “black hole” that Labour said it discovered after taking office,but failed to hit a hopeful tone for the years ahead.

More painful measures are expected when Chancellor Rachel Reeves outlines the government’s budget next month. Starmer and Reeves have styled themselves as tough, frugal guardians of the public purse, but they are facing pressure to improve their financial offer for Britain’s public services, including a National Health Service (NHS) that was described in a damning review this month as being in “critical condition.”

In a helpfully timed piece of good news, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said Wednesday that it now expects Britain to log faster economic growth than the eurozone this year, predicting an expansion of 1.1%.

Nonetheless, results will not be quick. A Labour MP who is supportive of the government’s economic agenda admitted to CNN: “It’s going to be tough to begin with, and it’s going to feel quite hectic.”

Starmer, who left Liverpool for the United Nations General Assembly in New York, will consider the week a relative success; the party managed to refocus the political narrative on its core message after leaks and missteps threw it off course. Starmer’s speech was was light on fresh content but a heckler was calmly removed and the key messages were confidently delivered.

But a premiership can only survive on doom and gloom for so long, and patience is already wearing thin among much of the wider party.

An MP whose surprise victory in July’s election was illustrative of Labour’s huge success in virtually every pocket of the country was already thinking about what they could run on in five years’ time. “It’s all very well saying it will take a decade,” they said. “But where are the tangibles?”

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CNN’s Olesya Dmitracova contributed to this article.