Government lacks emotional link with voters, cabinet ministers warned
The government must find ways to reconnect emotionally with voters, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, is said to have warned cabinet ministers, in a meeting where the prime minister said they were in “the fight of our lives”.The prime minister sought to rally his cabinet on Tuesday, telling them to ignore the polls and to prepare to take on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.But sources said that in a presentation, ministers were told the government needed to gain back voters’ trust with three Es, emotion, empathy and evidence.One source said McSweeney warned that the government had a “deficit in emotion”, though a No 10 source denied he had used that phrase.Cabinet ministers are understood to have raised concerns about the government’s ability to connect with voters.
Starmer said a relentless focus on the cost of living would mean Labour could win the next election, though the prime minister’s new year plan has already been derailed by the need to respond to Donald Trump’s raid on Venezuela and threats towards Greenland,Starmer, who spent the final months of last year dogged by leadership speculation, said he had strong faith in his cabinet and he would “relish” the fight against Reform,The latest YouGov poll put the Conservatives ahead of Labour for the first time since the general election, both of them behind Reform, with Labour on just 17%,Ministers saw a presentation that urged them not to panic about Labour’s dismal poll ratings, likening them to the plummeting popularity of previous governments after taking office,But the presentation did not include direct comparisons of previous governments with the current government, according to sources.
Starmer’s ratings are unprecedentedly low for a new administration, partly because of the effect of a new party dominating the polls.Starmer said No 10 strategists were looking closely at the re-elections of centre-left governments in Norway, Canada and Australia and how they revived their fortunes by focusing on the cost of living, though Trump’s election was a key factor in the latter two.The prime minister’s visit to Reading on Monday, which was aimed at highlighting frozen bus and rail fares, was dominated by questions over the future of Greenland and the abduction of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, who has been indicted in New York since his capture by US troops.Starmer – who travelled to Paris on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” on Ukraine – told his cabinet that the government had to keep a tight domestic focus.“A Labour government renewing the country or a Reform movement that feeds on grievance, decline and division,” he said.
“They want a weaker state, they want to inject bile into our communities, they want to appease Putin.This is the fight of our political lives and one that we must relish.“I do not underestimate the scale of the task.But I have no doubt about this team.Governments do not lose because polls go down.
They lose when they lose belief or nerve.We will do neither.”Starmer will try to bring focus back to the government’s actions on the cost of living with another UK visit on Thursday after legislation is introduced to end the two-child benefit cap, a key ask of Labour MPs and a measure that will bring almost half a million children out of poverty.The new Labour deputy leader, Lucy Powell, attended cabinet, saying she was looking forward to “helping to tell the story of whose side we are on”.Powell told MPs on Monday night that the party would switch to an “incumbency first” model to protect MPs at the next election rather than targeting seats and would support MPs to become “leaders in their communities” and learn how to benefit politically from changes made by the government, for which MPs have so far gained little credit.
She also told MPs in the first parliamentary Labour party meeting of the year that they needed to stop infighting amid continued discontent with Starmer’s leadership.MPs will be offered workshops by organisers in Labour HQ on how to take credit for improvements in the local area or for policies directly helping constituents that have been implemented by the Labour government, including frozen rail fares, local community and high street funding and the warm home discount extension.“It’s a big switch organisationally and politically,” a Labour source said.“There’s tools and training the party is providing but Lucy and Anna Turley [the Labour party chair] are leading some political work about what else is needed and how MPs can support and share best practice.”Powell told the PLP meeting that the government needed to speak more directly about its achievements and said “dark forces” did not want a Labour administration to succeed.
“We’ve got a big argument to make and win.That Labour is on the side of ordinary people addressing the cost of living crisis, rewiring the country in the interests of the many not the few, taking on the vested interests, holding the powerful to account,” she said.
Kimmel on Trump’s whitewashing of January 6 anniversary: ‘Don’t give in to this revisionist history’
Late-night hosts observed the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection and recapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s first day in a US court.Jimmy Kimmel opened his monologue on Tuesday, 6 January, with an acknowledgment of the date: “Five years ago today, after losing what eventually judges from both sides in cities all around the country unanimously declared to be a free and fair election, Donald Trump tried to overthrow our government in a pathetic and illegal attempt to stay in the White House,” he said. “And there’s no other way to put it. You cannot look at the facts objectively and come to any conclusion other than that.“He tried to force the vice-president to claim voter fraud and refuse to certify Joe Biden’s victory, which even his own vice-president refused to do,” he continued
Dolly, Dreamgirls and Daniel Radcliffe: the biggest Broadway shows of 2026
The year 2025 found Broadway at an inflection point – New York theater finally fully rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, as the 2024-2025 season became the highest-grossing of all time, with $1.89bn in tickets sold thanks in part to a new generation of stars and fans. But with a record box office came record ticket prices, as Hollywood stars from Denzel Washington to George Clooney commanded sums pushing four figures for orchestra seating. This year feels relatively less Hollywood-y, though no less starry, with a healthy mix of revivals, new material and buzzy transfers on the calendar. Here are 12 of the most anticipated Broadway shows in 2026
Jon Stewart on Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela: ‘This is all exhausting’
Late-night hosts tore into the Trump administration’s surprise military attack on Caracas, capture of president Nicolás Maduro and vague plans to “run” Venezuela.Jon Stewart wasted no time in his first Daily Show appearance of 2026, immediately digging into Donald Trump’s shock decision to remove Maduro from power in the early hours of 2 January, which more than a dozen countries condemned as a “crime of aggression” to the UN.“Now, obviously, this is actually a very fraught moment for the world,” he said on Monday evening. “It is highly unusual for any government, any sovereign nation, to violate the airspace and territory of another sovereign nation and hit the grab and go on their president.“Look, no one knows how this operation is gonna work out,” he added
‘I wanted that Raiders of the Lost Ark excitement – you could die any minute’: how we made hit video game Prince of Persia
Programming was very open back in the 1980s. You had to teach yourself, either from magazines, or by swapping tips. When you wrote a video game, you submitted it on a floppy disk to a publisher, like a book manuscript. In my freshman year at Yale university, I sent Deathbounce, an Asteroids-esque game for the Apple II computer, to Broderbund, my favourite games company. They rejected it, but took my next effort, Karateka, a side-scrolling beat-’em-up
The Guide #224: Bondage Bronte, to more comeback tours – what will be 2026’s big cultural hitters ?
Welcome to 2026! I hope you are enjoying the final dribblings of the festive break, before reality bites on Monday. As is now tradition (well, we did it once before), this first newsletter of the new year looks at some of the big questions we hope will be answered in the next 12 months, across film, TV, music and games. Hopefully it will double up as a decent primer for the year ahead too, though for a more exhaustive rundown check the Guardian’s 2026 previews for film, music, TV, gaming, stage and art. Right, let’s get on with it:A storyline likely to rumble on through the year is the proposed purchase of Warner Bros by Netflix, which will require government approval (certainly not a given), not to mention all manner of contractual fine-tuning, before that big red N gets stamped on Warners’ famous water tower. Just enough time then for Hollywood’s greatest wrangler of spectacle, and newly installed head of the Director’s Guild, Christopher Nolan to demonstrate the value to Netflix of putting mass-market movies on the biggest screens possible
My cultural awakening: I May Destroy You helped me confront being spiked
When I May Destroy You aired in the summer of 2020, I hadn’t yet been spiked. Michaela Coel’s comedy-drama, based on her own experience of sexual assault, follows Arabella (Coel) as she realises she was drugged and raped on a night out. With one in four women in Britain having experienced sexual violence, the 12-part series was a difficult watch for many. If not relatable, then confronting and familiar; something that had happened to others, but close enough to know that it could happen to you. Three months later, it did happen to me
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