What went wrong in Labour’s first 100 days
What went wrong in Labour’s first 100 days
Four key issues for Labour that led to a dive in opinion polls for the new government.
This weekend will mark 100 days since Labour won the general election.
If the new prime minister and his cabinet take a minute to sit down this Saturday and reflect on how it’s gone, will they consider it a job well done?
They would likely point to achievements such as taking steps to reform workers’ rights, kicking off plans to deliver on the promise to build 1.5m new homes by 2029 and bringing forward a bill to ban no-fault evictions.
And yet opinion polls do not paint a positive picture.
One YouGov poll found Sir Keir Starmer is as unpopular as Reform leader Nigel Farage.
Another found Starmer is more sleazy than Rishi Sunak.
Where did it all go wrong, and is the media to blame?
Means testing the winter fuel allowance for pensioners
Ask the average person on the street and they are likely to point to two news stories that have dominated Labour’s first 100 days.
The first is the plan to means test the winter fuel allowance for pensioners. Anyone not in receipt of pension credit or certain other benefits will no longer receive the payment.
For those just above the threshold of eligibility, or for those who are eligible for benefits but have not claimed them, the worry is they will slip through the net and struggle to afford their energy bills this winter. This is what charities such as Age UK have warned.
And financial journalist Martin Lewis has also produced a scathing verdict on the plan. He gave culture secretary Lisa Nandy a tough grilling this week on Good Morning Britain.
However there’s some support for Labour’s plan, with a YouGov poll showing opinions on it were fairly evenly split.
There’s been articles highlighting the well-off people who receive the annual payment of between £100 and £300 and use it towards their holiday money.
This week the Conservatives tried to highlight the pain Labour may inflict on some pensioners who fall through the cracks. However their video ad campaign received a roasting online after viewers spotted one of the struggling pensioners was wearing a £17,000 Rolex watch.
The Conservatives themselves have floated the idea of means testing the payment in the past, so it’s not a totally wacky idea lacking public support. The issue is the suddenness and method of introducing it, which means some people may fall through the cracks. The headlines this winter, should the worst happen to struggling pensioners, could be a real ongoing issue for Labour.
Donations row
The second story most people will likely think of when asked about Labour’s first 100 days is the donations and gifts row.
It all began when it emerged Labour donor Lord Alli had been issued a temporary pass after the election. It then emerged he had gifted clothes to Starmer’s wife that were not declared on time, and from here the story spiralled to focus on the £100,000+ of freebies Starmer has received since 2019. They include clothes, glasses and tickets to events.
It then took Labour too long to take the story seriously, and the party continues to be caught on the back foot by the row.
Nandy tried to argue on Sky News this week that donations and hospitality gifts are not against the rules when properly declared by MPs.
The party seems to still be in denial about why this story is riling some members of the public.
There’s a lack of foresight around how this issue would be perceived, given how critical the party’s MPs and leadership has been of Conservative donations and the “one rule for them” behaviour.
If you are going to warn the public they are facing tough times (more on that shortly), then benefitting from the perks of public office is probably not going to go down well at a time when trust in politicians is grim.
Starmer has now repaid £6,000 worth of donations, and pledged to make changes to rules around hospitality and gifts for MPs.
The story will remain a headache for him, as it raises questions about his judgement.
Yawning gap between election and budget
A key reason why the donations row and debate about winter fuel allowance dominated the media agenda for weeks on end is the lengthy wait for the autumn budget.
Sir Keir Starmer warned the October 30 budget would be “painful" back on August 26, leaving the public and press over nine weeks to fester over just how terrible it will be.
In that information vacuum the press has had little specific detail to focus on. It means that when Starmer tried to get people’s attention away from the donations row, there wasn’t really anything to direct them to.
Instead the spotlight has been on the two negative stories and speculation on all the ways Labour might target savers and pensioners in the budget.
Loss of the positive vibes from the election campaign
This leads us on to the lack of good vibes.
Voters’ expectations of the “change” being promised by Labour were high after the general election. The vibes were good. Even though Labour had a historically low popular vote, there was optimism about a change in leadership.
During the general election campaign, people were told there would be no increases to income tax, national insurance and VAT. That it was time to turn the page on sleaze in politics.
Now the message is the budget will be “painful”, and yet we do not know how painful or for whom it will be worse. And Labour appear to some to be “the same as the rest of them” due to the freebies row.
Starmer has said he knows he needs to deliver on Labour’s promises in order to deal with the “snake oil” of populism.
Of course any government should expect criticism, because the nature of leading is that you make tough decisions that will not please everyone.
But if you want to tackle populism, you need to be very clear on what your own message and plan actually is.
Labour could have perhaps avoided its 100-day PR meltdown by better planning the communications strategy for those early days. Ensuring there were no gaps in the media calendar that could be filled with negative stories. The donations story took too long to resolve. The budget should have been brought forward.
The most-read publications, and the ones that tend to influence the day’s news agenda on the big TV news channels, are right leaning. The Mail, Telegraph, Times and The Sun were never going to applaud Labour’s first 100 days.
But the trouble is Labour has made it so easy for the negative press to spiral. And it’s not just right leaning media that have been reporting on these woes.
The Mirror’s left-wing political pundit Kevin McGuire has been highly critical of Labour’s decision on the winter fuel payment during his regular appearances on Good Morning Britain.
The Guardian, writing about Sue Gray’s dismissal from her role as chief of staff less than 100 days into the job, reported there were concerns “over a lack of clear political direction at the top”.
This is not a right-wing press problem for Labour, although it has undoubtedly magnified the issues.
Labour’s ascension to power has not come out of nowhere. They knew the election was in the bag since Liz Truss’s disastrous 50-day stint as PM. Why then, was the first 100 days not mapped out more effectively?
Some good news for Starmer
There may have been cheers in Number 10 yesterday when it was announced that James Cleverly had been eliminated from the Conservative leadership campaign.
The vote by Tory MPs leaves the race between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick - both candidates who lean further right on the political spectrum.
Just days ago at the Tory party conference, Cleverly had said the party needs to become more “normal”.
Both Badenoch and Jenrick have experienced rocky media coverage during their campaigns.
For Badenoch it was the claim about maternity pay being excessive, while Jenrick claimed British special forces were murdering terror suspects rather than arresting them. Will either of these candidates restore the Conservatives’ chances of winning at the next election?
Cleverly was the favourite among the general public and Conservative voters.
The final winner will be announced on November 2.
Also this week
A Cambridgeshire school has sparked an angry backlash after refusing to authorise sick days for period pain unless parents provide “related medical information”. Neale-Wade Academy in March, Cambridgeshire, also said it was no longer accepting explanations such as "unwell, poorly or ill" for it to authorise student absences. The school said the move was intended to encourage regular attendance.
Boris Johnson has been doing the media rounds this week advertising his new book, Unleashed. It’s not been a relaxing book tour for Johnson, who has faced questions such as “what lie do you regret the most” and whether Brexit has been a success. He’s been critical of Sir Keir Starmer for taking freebies, which is interesting given the former PM received over £20,000 worth of donations towards his wedding to Carrie.
King Charles will pause his cancer treatment next week so he can carry out a high-profile tour of Australia. The monarch will be away for 11 days during his first overseas tour since being diagnosed with a form of the disease. His trip is likely to spark further debate in Australia regarding calls from some to break ties with the British monarchy and become a republic.
The Times had a viral hit with its interview with tradwife influencer Hannah Neeleman (AKA Ballerina Farm), and so the paper has found another influencer whose life appears far removed from the vast majority of people to feature. Nara Smith went viral with her video making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from scratch after her child said she wanted one. When I say from scratch, I mean bread and everything. Her content is both fascinating to watch and utterly mad. My one criticism of The Times interview is it presents the concept of her making stuff like bubblegum from scratch as if it is actually her unvarnished real life. This is her business. People would feel far less triggered by her, and other influencer’s, elaborate snack content if they realised you aren’t supposed to emulate it.
Bosses at the UK’s biggest news publisher have told reporters to increase story counts to eight per day in order to drive more traffic to websites. Reach, like other media firms, has suffered losses in the wake of changes to Google and Facebook algorithms. That mean less traffic is being driven to its sites. Having admitted paywalls (asking people to pay to access content) are not working, the firm has now decided that churning out more content is the way forward. The strategy here is that the more stories a website publishes (ones that people may be searching for), the more chances it features in Google search results, the more people click on the sites and the more money is made in advertising revenue. This strategy can only provide short-term success, given how the search landscape is changing. Google now provides AI-generated summary answers to search queries, meaning stories Reach had been heavily relying on (such as “who is in Strictly this season” and “when will it snow”) are no longer viable for achieving volume of traffic. Reach argues in a memo to staff that this strategy is needed to save the “real” journalism. However this strategy conflicts with that. It leads to volume over quality and will likely burn out staff, especially those who are new to the industry. It does nothing to contribute to Reach as a trusted media brand.
What I’m Watching
Slow Horses (Apple TV+). I decided to watch this British spy series starring Gary Oldman after seeing series writer Will Smith accept an Emmy and drop a joke about his namesake’s Oscar slap. The show is an imperfect mix of comedy and thriller, with a few too many improbable twists and turns. Oldman as the rude and devious Jackson Lamb is the highlight of the series. Plus there are four seasons available to binge.