Friends of Sir Keir Starmer say the prime minister needs a holiday. After a year of electoral victories followed by a sharp drop in support – with no time in between – the high command of the UK Labor party seems tired.

“He needs a break, they all need a break,” said a confidant. “These are people who haven’t had a holiday in a year. They are crawling to the finishing line.” The big question at hand Starmer is whether he can return refreshed from a new year vacation abroad and revive the ailing administration.

The Financial Times spoke to ministers, aides, business leaders and Labor MPs – many speaking anonymously – to piece together what went wrong for Starmer after his landslide election victory on July 4 and whether that the prime minister will return the goods.

His ambition to lead a “government of service” was interrupted by an almost constant stream of interruptions or mistakes: the summer riots, the clothing donation scandal, the departure of Sue Gray, the fall from the Budget.

“He was really disappointed about going in the first few months,” said a Downing Street insider. “It’s not just a waste of time but a waste of political capital.”

In public, Starmer was defiant. Asked by the House of Commons liaison committee last week if he would have done anything differently, the prime minister said: “No.” He reiterated planning reforms, pensions and railway nationalization among the achievements of his government.

Yet no prime minister in recent times has seen such a drastic fall in public support in such a short period of time. Some Labor MPs have started discussing who could replace Starmer and lead Labor at the next election.

There is now widespread agreement in Number 10 and the Treasury that the £1.5bn cut in winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners in late July was a major political mistake, sowing the seeds for of many government problems later.

“We have to ask a lot more questions,” admitted an official involved in the decision, referring to the belief that chancellor Rachel Reeves is too ready to take on a cost-saving idea long promoted by the Treasury. .

The decision sparked a feeling around Starmer’s new government that working it was little different from the Conservatives, who had just been kicked out after 14 years in power. Starmer’s acceptance of a £32,000 freebie suit and glasses added to that narrative.

John McTernan, a former Labor Downing Street aide, said: “Cutting the winter fuel payment was a serious mistake because it was done out of context, in the long, four-month gap between the election and Budget. It has a fundamental effect on the perception of this government.”

Reeves hailed the cut in winter fuel payments as evidence of the need to take “tough decisions” to tackle what he claimed was “the worst economic legacy of any government since the second world war”.

Senior Labor figures admit the downbeat message has been exaggerated, contributing to a loss of business confidence. “We are very sad,” said a cabinet minister. “Maybe we did the right thing but we lack a story to explain why we did these things.”

The ministers admitted that the party is also not ready for the government. “Access to pre-election talks has not started early,” said a minister, referring to discussions taking place between opposition politicians and the civil service to prepare a plan for the government.

Gray, Starmer’s former chief of staff, was widely blamed in Starmer’s circles for a lack of preparation, not just in terms of policy but personnel. “The whole process of appointing ministers is useless,” said one minister.

Gray was finally forced out of his job by Starmer in October, shortly after the prime minister returned from a Labor conference in Liverpool that felt more like a wake than a victory party.

“After the conference, Keir is determined to change things,” said a Labor official. “People were just shocked. There was a shock in the government, then the riots, then the party conference. It’s not all Sue’s fault.”

Then came Reeves’ Budget on October 30, an event that caused a huge uproar in a business community that Labor had eagerly appealed to before the election. Economic loss and a fall in business confidence followed.

The sense of betrayal caused by Reeves’ £25bn national insurance increase among owners was huge, but it also had an economic impact. Surveys measuring confidence in manufacturing and Hiring plans fell through sharp; the economy is flat.

“He’s just not ready for the job,” said one boss of the FTSE 100. “The collapse of confidence in the business world is a disaster. I think it’s overdone, but it’s happening.”

The cumulative effect of all these failures was to destroy morale at the heart of Starmer’s administration. “There was a bit of a trust issue,” admitted one person who worked closely with Starmer.

A tentative relaunch in December saw Starmer set out six policy “milestones” to focus his government’s energy and resources, but he generated more headlines when he claimed that some civil servants are “comfortable in the hot bath of reducing management”.

“I don’t understand where this is coming from,” said a minister. “I should have been angry.” Starmer then had to write to angry civil servants to try to calm the row.

Starmer’s supporters believe he can turn things around in 2025. Tom Baldwin, the prime minister’s biographer, said that “for every big job he’s done, he’s had a rough start,” referring to inauspicious start to his role as Labor leader and as director of public prosecutions.

“He tries different things until he finds something that works,” Baldwin said. “It’s not glamorous or inspiring, but it’s probably not only the best way to dig yourself out of a hole, but also the best way to run the country.”

Starmer’s top team is finally taking shape, with veterans of the Tony Blair era brought back into the centre. Jonathan Powell and Liz Lloyd, stalwarts of the Blair Downing Street operation, have been brought back to reprise their roles on foreign policy and domestic reform, respectively. Lord Peter Mandelson, a new Labor veteran, will play a key role as ambassador to the US.

Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister and former Blair fixer, and Lord Spencer Livermore, a veteran adviser to Gordon Brown, met regularly with Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, to plan strategy and reject the political lines. The media team has been strengthened.

Starmer’s allies say he will “roll up his sleeves” and get on with the job, regardless of any deterioration in the economic outlook – or damaging fallout from the US president-elect’s trade policy. that Donald Trump – may force Reeves to return later in 2025 for more politics. harmful tax increases.

There is some optimism in the Starmer camp that Kemi Badenoch, Tory leader, has not become the political threat they first feared. A Downing Street insider said: “He was worried about how things would look in the House of Commons – that he might look like a white man ‘mansplaining’ a black woman. He handled it well. “

Starmer, however, is concerned about the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which may initially be a threat to the right in Badenoch but fears of Labor strategists will eventually show. a serious risk at his party too. “People are very nervous about the Reform,” said a minister.

Starmer’s team said that they did not make the mistake of deploying the “Pied Piper strategy” adopted by the US Democrats before the presidential election in 2016, when they actively talked to Trump in the hope that it would destroy the Republicans and take them down a populist rabbit hole. .

Trying to talk to Farage in the hope that he might pull Badenoch into Reform’s populist terrain backfires, according to Labor strategists: “If you do that, you might suddenly ask yourself ‘what are we doing?’ ,” said one. Another said: “There is no template for the centre-left defeating the populist right.”

Starmer’s team admits the prime minister needs to roll up his sleeves and prove to voters that a mainstream left-of-centre government can still deliver. “He is disappointed, everyone is disappointed,” said a Downing Street insider. “We have to show the people that we are on their side.”

McTernan said the Labor government reminded him of Eric Morecambe’s joke about playing “all the right notes but not . . . in the right order”, adding: “The fundamentals are right, the communications are not as good, but that is better than the other way around.”

Should Starmer and Reeves go to 2025 to try to inject some optimism into a political debate that has become depressed, almost fatalistic? A Labor minister seemed unsure: “I’m not sure if Rachel and Keir are happy people.”