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Eighty days into government after a landslide election win, Sir Keir Starmer came to Liverpool as the first Labour prime minister in 15 years to address conference.
It should have been a joyous victory lap, but instead this is a PM already stumbling, wrong-footed by a row over the amount of freebies he took as leader of the opposition, and dysfunction in Number 10.
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A year ago in the very same conference hall, Sir Keir was being cheered on stage almost like a rock star, with staffers nearly in tears as their leader made his pitch to become prime minister.
And while the reception was still very warm as he delivered his speech on Tuesday, the country is fast cooling on their new leader.
The hope – and hunger – on display at last year’s conference when Labour were on the cusp of power, and Sir Keir was riding high in the polls, has given way to the hard reality of governing.
New polling by Opinium reveals that the prime minister’s approval rating has dropped 45 points to -26 since he became the country’s leader. It now makes him – by a point – less popular than his predecessor Rishi Sunak.
Meanwhile, the row over the prime minister taking free clothes, holidays and tickets to football matches and concerts has also cut through, with two-thirds of people in a recent YouGov poll saying it was wrong to do it.
So his task at conference was to try to get his “mission-led” government back on track and try to convey the purpose of the short-term pain he is warning us all about.
It was a speech of three parts.
The first was to convey the…
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