'After Labour's honeymoon in office, Keir Starmer's report is covered in red ink,' says Mark Oaten

Things started so well. He looked the part and handled the wave of riots with quick and tough action.

Making an example of rioters with speedy jail sentences killed off the rebellions within daysand Starmer was widely seen as a man who could take bold decisions.

But it turned out he could also take bad ones and pretty soon the idea to remove the Winter Fuel Allowance from some pensioners became a massive own goal.

On paper, it made economic and social policy sense to target payments at those who needed it most, but the measure lacked emotional and political intelligence.

It was right to limit the payments but the threshold was clumsy and should have been set much higher. It would have been easy to use the tax system to remove theallowance from wealthy pensioners.

Worse still, the timing was badly judged, making your first tough fiscal decision against pensioners was an unwise target, especially weeks afteran election when the policy was never on theagenda.

The narrative about tough choices and honesty with voters had merit but it soon turned into too much negativity – nobody was inspired to hear that things will only get worse.

As the rain cancelled our summer, the Labour government seemed to darken every glimmer of hope that a new government would normally be so keen to promote.

Thehoneymoon period we wanted was the Caribbean, instead we got on awetwalkingweekendinWales.

But worse was to come.

Often in politics it’s the smaller issues that become a symbol of a bigger problem. For Labour, the free gifts of stays in flats and clothes and hospitality have simply looked wrong and out of touch with the very people who voted Starmer into Number 10.

Who else is given a gift of cash to spend thousands on a suit?

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The blame is with Sir Keir and here is the problem. If you have a legal background then you view things through the prism of “is this legal?” and accepting money for suits or a box at Arsenal is totally legal if declared.

In Starmer’s mind, it’s the only criteria. If he had an Alistair Campbell or Mandelson around, they would have taught him about optics, and I don’t mean free glasses, but someone sitting back and asking what this look like to the outside world and the very pensioners your cutting allowances from.

I remember during the dark days of the John Major government when it lurched from one crisis to the other, someone said the politicians needed to spend more time inthe bath - the point was finding time to think and reflect, not jump from one thing to the next.

So, Sir Keir, take a moment to think, how does this look and smell?

And if you don’t have theinstincts, then quickly find someone that does. Ps it's clearly not Sue Gray.