Will things really get better under Labour?

Labour’s honeymoon didn’t last long. Keir Starmer won power less than three months ago with a vow to ‘change Britain’. But the Labour government’s missteps over the last few weeks – not least the ongoing row about freebies – makes it hard to distinguish life under Labour to what came before.

‘Vanity snappers’, free posh frocks and taking thousands of pounds of hospitality tickets while telling voters that hard times are coming: what did Starmer expect voters were going to make of this politically toxic combination? Taking ‘unpopular decisions,’ as the Prime Minister pledged to do, sounds good, but the trick is to present these in a way that makes you seem steely and determined, not – as with the winter fuel payment cut – as cruel and nasty.

The Tories made such a mess of their final years in power that many voters were prepared to give Labour the benefit of the doubt in the July election.