WHAT a difference 60 days makes since Sir Keir Starmer crossed the threshold of 10 Downing Street, vowing his Government would “tread more lightly on your lives”.
A hard sell to pensioners now facing a 22-page form, with 243 questions, to have any hope of keeping their snatched Winter Fuel Allowance.
Is making it illegal to spark up in a pub garden “treading more lightly” on punters’ lives?
According to Cabinet minister Lucy Powell yesterday, next in their sights is “the scourge of vaping” — which doesn’t sound very light-touch to me.
Despite an election promise of no return to free movement, we now know that Sir Keir spent the summer hatching a “mobility scheme” with the EU for young people — but what have infamously hands-on Brussels demanded in return?
And after years of distancing himself from the hard Left, suddenly there’s billions from the taxpayer going in rewards to militant unions.
Hiking train drivers’ salaries to a whopping £81,000 for a four-day week is a nice touch for them, but a heavy burden for those trying to get to work to pay for it.
None of this was in the Labour manifesto — and I’m not the only one to have noticed.
Starmer walked into No10 with an approval rating of +19 per cent that first day, according to pollsters Opinium.
Fast-forward 60 days and that’s down a massive 32 points to -13 per cent.
Starmer made big promises, too — warning that “a lack of trust . . . can only be healed by actions, not words”.
And since then?
His wardrobe donor was handed gilded access to No10 in a “passes for glasses” bungle — and another donor got a plum Treasury job, only to have it revoked in the subsequent backlash.
Labour apparatchiks were inserted in neutral civil service roles, bypassing the usual recruitment processes — and then came a speech slagging off Boris Johnson for eating cheese in the Downing Street garden, only for Keir to have to admit his own new business adviser was at the same lockdown gathering.
The list goes on.
And while none of this is fatal, voters don’t like being treated like mugs.
Can you imagine the whining from Starmer and Deputy PM Angela Rayner if this was still the last lot?
What about the Labour MP exposed as a slum landlord, despite the party promising to be the “renters’ champions”?
If Jas Athwal was a Tory, it would be endless letters, calls for inquiries and angry tours of TV studios to demand a suspension of the whip.
Six of the 32 points that his personal ratings have slipped have come since that first press conference two weeks ago.
Harry Cole
The whiff of hypocrisy is far more damaging to Starmer than any of these individual unfortunate episodes — but the PM clearly thinks the scale of his Commons majority means he can ride out what he would have been the first to dub sleaze if it involved anyone else.
Just as dangerous was his airy dismissal of any allegations — as he imperiously accused journalists asking him legitimate questions of doing the bidding of those evil Tories.
Our new PM needs to be careful.
Six of the 32 points that his personal ratings have slipped have come since that first press conference two weeks ago.
The moniker of Two-Tier Keir used by some after the Southport riots was unfair, but the PM risks looking like Don’t Care Keir in the eyes of an electorate that has never been more promiscuous with its votes.
And while it is clear taxes are going up, the doom and gloom from the PM and Chancellor Rachel Reeves about the dire state of the economy stretches that critical currency for any government: credibility.
All summer, their warnings got more extreme — promises of hope and change replaced with dreary “this is going to hurt” pre-Budget pitch-rolling.
But Lucy Powell, Leader of the House of Commons, telling Times Radio yesterday that Labour had “no alternative” to taking away winter fuel payments or “we could have seen a run on the Pound” was frankly gibberish.
Be it abandoned manifestos, sleaze or tax hikes, Starmer must avoid looking like he is taking the public for fools.
For a PM elected by just one in five voters, on a low turnout, it is no surprise that doing so is hurting him just two months into his premiership.
Don’t just take my word for this.
Polling from politicos Charlesbye and data gatherers Obsurvant shows more than half of voters say Starmer has not met their expectations as PM and 55 per cent trust the Government less for acting on ideas not in its manifesto.
Even among Labour voters, just shy of a third — 32 per cent — reckon his performance has fallen short and 36 per cent have lost some trust in Labour.
Just 60 days in, those are numbers that should worry even the most bullish of administrations.
BOLD claims from the Home Office that the new regime is turning the tide on small boats.
But two months in, why is there still no boss of the much-hailed new Border Security Command, set up to “smash the gangs”?
I hear the recruitment process has hit an unfortunate buffer, with anyone half-decent who’s approached turning down the near-impossible job.
SUN journalists badgered Sir Keir Starmer and now Chancellor Rachel Reeves throughout the election campaign to rule out a hike in fuel duty, with varying levels of success.
The new PM played down the idea he was going to raid drivers’ wallets – but is betrayal now in the air?
A major red flag is the new boss of Labour quango GB Energy – who slammed the last Government for freezing fuel duty for 14 years.
Juergen Maier, former CEO of Siemens UK, raged in March: “How is this compatible with the necessity to move to low carbon and more public transport?”
And the noises coming out of the Treasury are worrying ahead of the Budget on October 30.
But after a decade and a half of our Keep It Down crusade with FairfuelUK, we’ve obviously kept the receipts.
“Our track record on this is pretty consistent with the Sun’s campaign”, Starmer told us in June. “We’ve actually backed it every time.”
Let’s keep it that way, PM.
