‘Anyone but Labour.’ Inside Cabinet anger as voters vent fury at Starmer

“It’s certainly been a galvanising and unifying experience for MPs,” a Cabinet minister remarked. “I think some of the more outlandish versions of reality have been dealt with.”

‘No one has a clue’, frustration at failure to publicise Labour help with cost of living

But Labour’s long-term problems remain unsolved. The party is struggling to reach 20 per cent in the polls and is almost certain to take heavy losses in the elections for councils across England and the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, which take place on Thursday.

For most people in the party, other than the now-small Corbynite faction on the left, there is a feeling that Starmer has the right policies – such as the Renters Rights Act which has just come into force – but is doing a poor job of explaining them to voters, perhaps not helped by the fact that he has employed four different directors of communications during his time in No 10.

One Cabinet minister told The i Paper they were struck by how few people were aware of the measures the Government had ushered in that would help ease the cost-of-living burden while out campaigning for the local elections.

“People would complain that we’re not doing anything to help, and I would say: ‘But you realise your state pension is going up by £500 this month, that you’re getting £100 off your energy bills despite the disruption in the Middle East?’ Stuff like that and no one had a clue,” the minister said. “It points to a serious problem in our communications that we’re just not getting our messaging out there.”

A separate member of the Cabinet agreed, but sympathised with the challenge the Prime Minister faces in getting his message across in the fragmented landscape of the modern media.

“No one is getting their news from newspapers and broadcasters anymore,” they lamented. “It’s all on their phones and it is so much harder to cut through.”

No 10 insiders argue that the comms operation has improved over the past couple of months – ironically, while the director of communications job has been absent following the resignation of Mandelson ally Tim Allan.

‘To be told to get f***ed’ every weekend is grating’

No one in Labour has much enjoyed the election campaign in recent weeks. “To go out every weekend and knock doors, and get told to get f***ed, that’s grating,” one MP complained – adding that Starmer was often “namechecked on the door” as a reason not to vote for the party.

“It’s a lot harder campaigning from government than from opposition,” a minister wryly observed.

Opposition parties are more upbeat – not just the insurgent Reform UK and Greens, but also the Liberal Democrats and even the Conservatives who are hoping to take seats off Labour in some areas even while losing elsewhere to Reform and the Lib Dems.

A gleeful Tory reported: “You knock on people’s doors and they say ‘anyone but Labour’ – it used to be ‘anyone but Tory’!”

Labour is widely forecast to lose the majority of council seats it currently holds, with the Greens the biggest threat in big cities and Reform doing well in towns and rural areas.

Pollster Joe Twyman of Deltapoll said that even if the dire predictions hold true, there is still a chance that Starmer can find glimmers of hope which will allow him to argue that he has outperformed rock-bottom expectations.

He told The i Paper: “The thing about local elections is, because they are so difficult for the person in the street to get their head around, they look to cues from parties and from the media as to what the main stories are – and you can always tell a positive story. It may be that the management of expectations is sufficient to placate the wolves at the door – but equally, it may not and it depends on the detail of the results.”

‘Next week will be grim. We have to be much bolder’

The aftermath will present a challenge for Labour in any case, Twyman added, as the Prime Minister will have to decide whether to start prioritising voters in one type of seat at the expense of those elswehere.

He said: “Do you give up on the Reform voters and concentrate on getting back the progressives and the ‘one nation’ Tories? In which case, those MPs in the more Reform areas start to think ‘well I’m f***ed’.”

A few days after the elections, Starmer will present a King’s Speech containing more than two dozen proposed bills which he will argue are driving Britain in a more progressive direction. “Next week will be grim. We have to be much bolder,” a loyal Cabinet minister said. “And we will be bolder. I want to see more of the angry Keir, where he goes off script. That’s the Keir we know.”

At some point before the end of May, however, the ghost of Mandelson will return to haunt the Prime Minister. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee has finished poring over thousands of documents relating to his ambassadorial appointment, and has advised the Government on which should be held back or censored – everything else will be published, pending a back-and-forth between the committee and Downing Street on any security-related details.

The expected double blow of a poor set of elections and further Mandelson revelations explains why the chances of a formal challenge to Starmer remain the talk of Westminster.

One option to try and shore up the Prime Minister’s authority would be a Cabinet reshuffle soon after the election results are out. Downing Street insiders have suggested Starmer is leaning away from this idea, but the very suggestion is causing parts of the Government to seize up.

‘Miliband is a real possibility’

One adviser to a current minister said they felt “in limbo” while their boss’s future hangs in the balance: “People keep trying to book meetings with them and I don’t know if they’ll even have a job by then.”

But regardless of how he tries to regain the initiative, the assumption remains that if a Labour big beast decides to lead a putsch against Starmer, then he is heading for the exit. Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are seen as the frontrunners to replace him – or Andy Burnham, the party’s most popular senior figure, though he is currently ineligible to take over as leader because he is not an MP.

“People just need to calm the f*** down,” a Cabinet minister said. “I’d point out that we’re not even halfway through the electoral cycle.”

Perhaps what is most likely to keep the Prime Minister in place over the coming months is a failure by the various contenders to win support beyond their own pre-existing ideological allies.

One MP warned while Streeting would struggle to win over Labour members, a Rayner victory would mean “Angela for 44 days” – suggesting the former deputy prime minister would crash out of Downing Street after a similarly short tenure to Liz Truss.

They also described it as “quite worrying” that Burnham was viewed as a panacea for Labour’s problems, questioning: “Is he that good? It’s quite easy being a mayor. Is that really what it’s come to?”

The upshot if all the front-runners prove too divisive could be Ed Miliband in No 10, despite his previous failed stint as Labour leader. “Colleagues need to be aware this is a real possibility,” the MP said. “Things can always get worse.”