Patrick Maguire

The first is giving a very strange speech in the Rose Garden of Downing Street, in which he essentially said, I know you've elected a Labour Party with the landslide majority, and people usually associate the Labour Party with good times.

1997, things can only get better.

Keir Starmer's message was quite literally, things can only get worse for the time being.

Now, for a Prime Minister who is not over-endowed with charisma or flair to present himself to the public like a sort of traffic warden saying, you know, you can't do that, you can't do this, I have no power, was a bad mistake, everyone now admits.

And separately, the cut to the winter fuel allowance that Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, announced very soon after.

is the thing that really, really poisoned Labour's reputation with its natural constituency of voters, I think.

So those two, they've never really recovered from that.

And also there was the controversy over Keir Starmer taking freebies in those first weeks as well.

They basically proved that they had neither...

the policy agenda nor the personal probity to deliver people some salvation from the Tory years.

And also, look, they've not dealt with the economy, stagnant growth, years of stagnation in the British economy.

It's just been a terrible combination of politics and policy.