Ahead of the welfare reform bill vote, a frustrated minister privately questioned the whole approach to the painful debate.
“We are spending an extra £20bn on welfare [compared with the last government], we are not cutting it by £5bn but somehow everyone believes we are cutting it by £5bn,” they said. “There is clearly a problem with messaging.”
Ahead of a damaging rebellion by Labour MPs on an issue which has pitted the parliamentary party against its own leadership, the comments reflect a widespread criticism of Sir Keir and many of his ministers.
Nothing underlined the mess more than the dramatic late concession during the debate to postpone changes to disability reforms to try to stave off a humiliating defeat.
One Labour MP put the prime minister’s problems more bluntly: “He is just bad at politics.”
This is an extraordinary thing to say about a prime minister whose party won 412 seats at the general election less than a year ago, but it does reflect a growing concern in the parliamentary party that Sir Keir is a politician who is far more comfortable rubbing shoulders with other world leaders than he is dealing with his own MPs.
On Sunday, he admitted he had failed to get to grips with the growing rebellion over welfare reforms earlier because he was so focused on foreign affairs, including the recent G7 and Nato summits and the escalating tensions in the Middle East.
His apparent disdain for the machinations of how things work in parliament was highlighted by the revelation he has only taken part in six votes since he won the election. Crucially walking through the voting lobbies is the one chance backbenchers have to get a word in with their leader.
A number of other points are regularly made by Labour MPs including some ministers.
First, Sir Keir and Ms Reeves blew a lot of their political credit in scrapping winter fuel payments for more than 10 million pensioners very early in the government.
They were later forced into a U-turn, but the damage was done.
“If you persuade MPs to do something difficult and then admit you are wrong, it is hard to persuade them to do it again and trust you,” one senior party figure noted.
Second, there seems to be no end goal for MPs to buy into. One of the criticisms levelled at the prime minister, most recently by polling guru Sir John Curtice, is that his main message is based on attacks on the previous government.
He said of the prime minister: “The only vision he’s really presented is: ‘We’ll fix the problems the Conservatives left us.’ But it’s not clear how he wants to change the country.”
Third, but not least, is the problem with communication. This is not only how policies are sold to the public and how they are communicated in the media, but actually trying to get buy-in from MPs themselves.
There is a feeling that he needs to get MPs much more involved in policy discussions, including working out how it will be implemented – and taking ownership of it.
The criticisms and the rebellion have damaged Sir Keir’s authority as a leader, but it is by no means a situation which cannot be salvaged.
One thing is clear: the prime minister must start listening if he is to repair his fractured party.
