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(Bloomberg) — Keir Starmer wanted his Labour Party’s annual conference to set out how it will deliver on its “change” promise to British voters. Instead, the prime minister and his top aides spent the first day trying to put to rest internal doubts about decisions taken in the first weeks in power.

The premier arrived in Liverpool amid fresh reports about political donations and gifts, and backbiting among top staffers over who wields power in Downing Street. That was on top of ructions about tax rises and budget cuts expected to dominate the government’s first budget next month.

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Labour’s top team used speeches and interviews Sunday to try to shift the focus back to what the government — elected in a landslide on July 4 — has promised on housing and what it calls a decade-long project to rebuild public services.

“Now is our moment,” Angela Rayner, Starmer’s deputy, told the conference. “Even now — especially now — there will be no complacency,” she said, in a nod to the internal squabbles. Labour won the election, she said, because it “had the discipline to make hard decisions and the determination to remain united.”

The ministerial fightback is due to continue Monday, when Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is expected to give a more “positive, optimistic message” about the future of the economy, Environment Secretary Steve Reed told Bloomberg Radio, after the government was criticized for dragging down confidence with gloomy warnings about the October budget.

The problem is, even people in government fear the messaging won’t cut through. One official said privately they expect a messy few days, with angry aides drinking with journalists without an obvious positive narrative to point to. A slump in Starmer’s approval rating makes things even harder.

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The opening of conference could hardly have been worse, with Rayner forced to use to what was meant to be a tone-setting appearance on the BBC to defend her handling of a New Year’s Eve holiday in New York subsided by a donor. Rayner said she had been “over-transparent” in her declarations, after the Sunday Times reported she and a friend had stayed in accommodation paid for by Waheed Alli, a TV mogul and Labour peer in the House of Lords.

“I had the use of the apartment and I disclosed that I had the use of the apartment,” Rayner said on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show. Donations are “a feature of our politics,” she said.

The interview underscored how Labour has become so distracted, with Starmer and his top team failing for weeks to shake off questions about Alli and the £575,000 ($766,000) he has given to Labour politicians since 2020, including paying for clothing for Starmer, his wife and government ministers.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson endured her own torrid interview on Sky News focused on events linked to her 40th birthday that were also funded by Alli — a fact first reported by Bloomberg. Phillipson said they were work events attended by journalists and people in the education sector, and that it was “frustrating” that the media focus was on donations rather than “the wider agenda that we’re setting up here in Liverpool.”

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The problem for Starmer and Labour is they campaigned on a promise to do politics differently. The premier has repeatedly said fixing Britain — including sorting out problems in the National Health Service — are a decade-long challenge that would require Labour to win a second term.

Yet even five years out from the next general election, the donations row is still dangerous for Labour, who are being accused of hypocrisy by the opposition Conservatives after Starmer and Rayner campaigned against Tory sleaze under previous administrations. Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party is calling for the whole system to be overhauled.

There’s no sign of the row dissipating. Asked by ITV why she accepted free tickets to see Taylor Swift — which Starmer also did this year — Phillipson said it “was a hard one to turn down” as “one of my children was keen to go.”

Against that backdrop, Starmer’s net approval rating has slumped to minus 26, down 45 percentage points since he became prime minister, according to a survey by Opinium published on the eve of the conference. Almost half of respondents had a negative view of Labour since the election, according to the survey, though Labour still leads the second-placed Conservatives on key policy areas including the National Health Service and — barely — on the economy.

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The Labour government is also facing a backlash over its decision to cut winter energy assistance for millions of pensioners as it tries to repair the UK’s public finances, and trade unions are trying to lodge a protest at conference.

“It’s a cruel policy,” Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite labor union, told Sky News on Sunday. “He needs to reverse it. And I’d like him to say that he’s made a misstep and to reverse that policy. I’d also like him to say that we’re not going to take this country down austerity mark 2.”

Unite is pushing for a motion on reversing the benefit cut, as well as a wider rethink of Reeve’s economic strategy ahead of what is expected to be a punitive budget on Oct. 30. If accepted, it will lead to an uncomfortable conference hall debate about the chancellor’s policies directly after her keynote speech on Monday. Any vote would be embarrassing, but not binding.

Labour MPs want reassurance Starmer and his team can win back the initiative. One said Downing Street had controlled the news agenda after the election but struggled with Parliament on summer recess. They said they wanted Reeves and Starmer to spell out how things will improve after the budget pain. 

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Another MP compared the feeling to Labour’s 1997 election victory under Tony Blair. This time is more bittersweet than rapture and the challenge is greater, they said, adding there’s a sense ministers are trying to get on with the job.

But there is little doubt that the negative headlines are making it harder. On the BBC, Rayner was also asked about another story animating senior aides in Downing Street: accusations that Labour staff are unhappy about the role of Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray.

Bloomberg reported Saturday that some Labour aides wanted Gray to leave her post after the conference. Asked if she thought Gray would still be in her job by Christmas, Rayner said she thought she would.“I don’t accept that Sue Gray is part of a problem at all,” she said.

It all made for a tough opening day of conference. Reed, the environment secretary, acknowledged that “of course” he was frustrated, but said any new government would experience a “grinding of the gears.”

“I want to talk about the changes we’re making following the general election,” he said.

—With assistance from Joe Mayes.

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