Britain’s Prime Minister, Bruised by a Dispute Over Freebies, Badly Needs a Reset

Keir Starmer has been dogged by problems, including gifts that he and his wife accepted, and is under pressure to reassure a disillusioned public.

When Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a whopping parliamentary majority in Britain’s election in July, it was with only 34 percent of the vote, leading one commentator to call it a “loveless landslide.” Now, some allies of Mr. Starmer worry that he is going too far in returning the favor.

The new prime minister has shown decidedly little love to a beleaguered British public, restricting payments that help retirees with winter heating costs and warning of painful cuts when the government rolls out its first budget next month. Things, Mr. Starmer said, “will get worse before they get better.”

As he prepares to address his party’s annual conference on Tuesday, several analysts said they expected Mr. Starmer to shift his tone — if not to one of hope and sunny optimism, then at least to one in which he will show how the government’s harsh early moves will pay off in the long term.

“He’ll hammer home the message that he inherited a legacy of ashes,” said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester. “But then he’ll pivot to the big structural changes that will make Britain stronger.”

One problem for Mr. Starmer is that his austere public tone has coincided with signs that he can be more profligate in private. He has been dogged by a series of tempests over freebies accepted by him and his wife, Victoria, as well as by internal squabbling over the salary paid to his powerful chief of staff, Sue Gray, which exceeds that of the prime minister himself.

The dispute over his adviser’s pay, which was leaked to the BBC, has prompted a flood of coverage of a supposedly strife-torn Downing Street, where political aides and senior civil servants are said to be disclosing damaging information on their rivals. The staunchly pro-Conservative Daily Telegraph summed up the waspish atmosphere with the headline, “I’m Still in Control, Says Starmer, as Feud Erupts.”

By themselves, none of these issues add up to much. But taken together, they have scuffed Mr. Starmer’s reputation for competence and probity. London newspapers, many of which share The Telegraph’s pro-Tory tilt, have delighted in splashing unflattering headlines about how Labour Party donors paid for expensive eyeglasses for Mr. Starmer and for glamorous gowns for his wife.

“What is slightly surprising is the lack of awareness of their political vulnerability,” said Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow at U.K. in a Changing Europe, a research institute in London. “We’ve got a Tory press, and Keir Starmer has made so much of Tory sleaze over the last few years.”

Mr. Starmer and his allies defend his acceptance of gifts on various grounds: the free box seats for games of Arsenal, his favorite soccer team, are necessary because his security detail makes it impossible for him to sit in the stands.

The money for Ms. Starmer to buy clothes was appropriate, said David Lammy, the foreign secretary, because the prime minister and his spouse do not have a wardrobe budget and they need to “look their best for the British people.” (On Friday, however, the prime minister and other senior Labour ministers said they would no longer accept donations for clothing.)

Critics say the couple’s readiness to take freebies was at odds with Mr. Starmer’s oft-repeated pledge to preside over a government of service, after years of Conservative governments that were marred by scandals, incompetence and a sense of being out of touch with regular people.

“The first thing everyone learned about this Labour government is that they took money away from pensioners,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham, referring to the cutback in subsidies given to older people to pay for heating fuel.

“In that context,” Professor Fielding said, “these things about Sue Gray’s pay, Keir Starmer’s free tickets, and his wife’s free clothes muddies the water. It suggests this is not such a different government.”

Mr. Starmer has taken pains to draw a line between his government and 14 years of Conservative rule. He excoriated his predecessors for leaving a 22 billion pound ($29.3 billion) “black hole” in the government’s finances, which he said made it necessary to curb the fuel subsidy for all but the poorest seniors.

He unveiled a review of England’s depleted National Health Service, which concluded that the system had been “starved of capital” under successive Conservative governments. He announced an emergency plan to release thousands of prisoners early to relieve a similarly neglected, overcrowded prison system.

“People have every right to be angry,” Mr. Starmer said in a characteristically chiding speech about the N.H.S.

Voters, however, are not taking out their anger only on the Conservatives. Mr. Starmer’s approval ratings have tumbled, as well. He was viewed favorably by 32 percent of people and unfavorably by 46 percent, according to a poll taken by the market research firm Ipsos in early September. That was his highest unfavorable rating since the Labour Party lost a special election in Hartlepool, a northern port city, in 2021 — a defeat so stinging that it put Mr. Starmer’s party leadership briefly at risk.

Whatever the hit to his popularity, Professor Ford argued, Mr. Starmer was right to emphasize the problems in the early days of his government to make it clear where the fault lies. He pointed out that Margaret Thatcher weathered a rocky first year with dire approval ratings. In a five-year term, he noted, Mr. Starmer will have time to shift the focus to how his policies had improved the country before he faces the voters again.

But other analysts said there was a danger of overdoing the misery. Professor Fielding noted that in 1945, a Labour prime minister, Clement Atlee, presided over one of the most consequential modern British governments, creating, among other things, the N.H.S. But his austere policies — he extended the wartime rationing of goods — soured the public, which turned Labour out of power six years later.

The downbeat message could also undercut the government’s efforts to lure foreign investment, a theme that is likely to feature in a speech at the conference on Monday by the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.

“If you’re trying to attract more foreign investors to the U.K., and you’re saying, ‘We’re releasing people from jail because we have no room, our N.H.S. isn’t working, and we’re cutting fuel subsidies for old people,’ that’s not going to be very effective,” Ms. Rutter said. “There’s too much of pain for pain’s sake rather than, ‘Take the medicine now and things will get better in the long run.’”