Campaign in poetry, govern in prose. So runs the old adage. A politician should appeal to the public's emotions on the campaign trail, then in office run the country pragmaticallyWith pragmatism, a way of dealing with problems or situations that focuses on practical approaches and solutions. and analytically.

But supporters and opponents of the Labour Party alike are beginning to worry it is governing more in the style of an EE CummingsAn American poet and author who died in 1962 and was famed for literary experimentation and unconventional punctuation. poem: disjointed, confusing, not universally popular.

Party members were expecting to ride a wave of joy all the way to this week's party conference in Liverpool. Instead, Labour already feels demoralised, on the back foot.

First there was the internal party dispute over the two-child benefit capIntroduced by the Conservative Government in 2017, and supported by Labour, the two-child benefit cap prevents families from claiming Child Tax Credit or Universal Credit for more than two children in a household., over which Keir Starmer suspended seven of his own MPs. Now there is an even bigger row over winter fuel payments to pensioners.

And then there is the ongoing fallout of "freebiegate": Labour ministers' apparent weakness for gifts from donors.

Keir Starmer accepted more than £100,000 in gifts, including clothes and football tickets.¹

Another Labour minister used money from millionaire Labour peer Waheed Alli to throw a birthday party. Several got free tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.

And rumours of a power struggle between Starmer's chief of staff, Sue Gray, and his top political adviser, Morgan McSweeney, rumble on.² Amid all this, the Labour leader's approval ratingsThe percentage of respondents to an opinion poll who express approval of someone or something, typically a political figure. fell 45 points in just three months.³

This is hardly the first government to be off to a rocky start. In 1979, Margaret ThatcherBritain's first female prime minister and the longest-serving prime minister of the modern era. went from positive approval ratings down to an approval of -19% in just 10 months.⁴ She came back three years later to win the biggest majority since 1945.

In fact, Labour went through a similar experience last time it won an election, in 1997. Six months later, it announced that Formula 1 would be exempt from a new ban on tobacco advertising. It was then revealed that F1's chief executive had previously given Labour a £1m donation. Despite the scandal, Labour went on to win the next election.

Starmer, in contrast, has not been accused of doing favours for donors. But some think his problems might be more damaging, because they make him vulnerable to the most dangerous charges a politician can face: hypocrisy, and being out of touch.

It is difficult, they say, for a prime minister to insist that the country needs to bear years of financial pain to get back on track, while he is living it up in a free Arsenal corporate box. It makes him look like he believes only others should be bearing the pain of his decisions.

Starmer, many believe, should have realised accepting so many gifts was bad politics, and banned his cabinet from taking them. That would have shown he was willing to make his own sacrifices. He should have also reined in Gray and McSweeney.

And he should have found a way of offering hope, not just warnings of yet more years of hardship to come.

But others think it is not his fault. They say the scandal is confected by the press. Most people think it is fair enough to take things when they are offered, as many politicians have done in the past. It will all be forgotten by the next election.

Is Keir Starmer losing the plot?

Yes: Starmer's great failure is that he has not come up with a positive vision for the country. Instead, scandals are filling the vacuum. It is up to him to get a grip on his operation.

No: Labour always gets a hard time from Britain's mostly right-wing press. Bad media coverage now is all just noise; what really matters is how the country feels in five years' time, before the next election.

Or... Probably in 2029 no-one will remember the freebies scandal. But the risk for Starmer is that this episode is creating negative mood music around him, and that could last much longer.