The very private prime minister opens the door to a new approach

Keir Starmer has faced rebellions and discontent in the ranks since his election landslide. Can he steady the ship in year two, asks Rachel Sylvester, Political Editor

- Rachel Sylvester, Political Editor

Keir Starmer spent much of his childhood by the side of his disabled mother's hospital bed. His brother was born with severe learning difficulties. There are few people in Westminster who understand the importance of welfare support for disabled people better than the prime minister.

Yet even when he was facing a parliamentary revolt against his government's benefit reforms, he refused to draw on his experiences to make the case for change. “I don’t think he would ever want to deploy his family in that way,” said one Downing Street source. “It’s personal.”

Instead, Starmer allowed the proposals to be seen as a bloodless, Treasury-driven attempt to save money. There was too little humanity.

As the rebellion grew, No 10 went into what one senior Labour figure describes as a “fetishisation of toughness, with people saying it’s better we lose than we back down”. Two aides reduced backbenchers to tears and told female MPs to “grow a pair” as they tried to bully rather than cajole the rebels into line.

According to an insider: “The boys in Downing Street saw it as a test of manhood. It took Keir himself to say: ‘We're shifting tactics.’ He didn’t want the confrontation.”

By Friday, the government had been forced to make significant concessions to avoid what would have been a devastating defeat on a key reform. For many in the Labour party, however, the inability to communicate the underlying moral purpose of the policy and the failure to understand the strength of feeling in the House of Commons were symptomatic of a prime minister who seems oddly disconnected from his party and the country.