ANDREW NEIL: In a few short weeks, Labour has become synonymous with in-fighting, cronyism and freeloading. I can’t think of any government that has slurped down the drain so quickly

 When a prime minister is forced to assert publicly ‘I’m in charge’, it’s usually during a bout of mid-term blues, when the government has started to fall apart — or at least crumble at the edges.

So when Keir Starmer, who hasn’t been in power for three months, resorts to claiming, ‘I’m completely in control’, we can be sure his government is already in serious trouble.

The rapid descent of Labour from its historic landslide victory on July 4 is a wonder to behold. I can’t think of any previous ­government, elected with such a huge majority, that has slurped down the drain so quickly.

The Starmer honeymoon passed in the ­twinkling of an eye, with barely time to open the champagne. When Tony Blair was elected by a landslide in 1997, his honeymoon was still going pretty strong four years later, when he won by another landslide.

As the scale of its current majority unfolded in the early hours of July 5, Labour could have been forgiven for thinking that it, too, could count on at least two terms. That’s already far from guaranteed.

I argued at the time that Labour’s support may look as wide as the ocean – but it’s only as deep as the village pond.

Even with a huge majority, winning a miserly 34 per cent of the vote leaves you ­peculiarly vulnerable to changes in public opinion –changes already under way.

Starmer’s public standing is in freefall – with his personal approval ratings down 26 per cent since the election, according to today’s ­exclusive Mail poll.

And Labour is losing local government by-elections in record time.

On Thursday it suffered three defeats, two at the hands of the hapless Tories in Worthing and in Westminster wards, and one by the Lib Dems in Bromsgrove, where Labour was crushed by a 27 per cent swing against it and finished third (behind the Tories).

None of this, of course, need be of lasting significance in the grand scheme of things. It is early days. But the government is already pocked with hallmarks that don’t usually disfigure administrations until they’re much longer in the tooth: ­faction-fighting, cronyism and freeloading.

Labour has managed to become synonymous with all three in a matter of weeks. It’s really rather impressive, in its way.

Starmer & Co will be hoping for better things as Labour gathers this weekend in ­Liverpool, its historic ­Merseyside fiefdom, for its first party conference as a government in 15 years.

It can hardly be worse than the past seven days, which have been the most dismal yet. Nothing has gone right.

The Bank of England, ­foolishly in my view, failed to cut interest rates despite inflation being only a tad over 2 per cent for the second month in a row.

This would have brought some blessed relief to ­mortgage-holders and reduced the massive monthly interest charges incurred from servicing the national debt (a cool £6 billion in August alone, since you ask).

Speaking of the national debt, it was revealed yesterday that this has now grown to more than 100 per cent of our annual GDP for the first time since the early 1960s, when Starmer was a wee bairn and the country was still paying off its huge ­Second World War debts.

The UK’s accumulated public sector net debt is now just shy of £2.8 trillion. Scary.

The bad news didn’t stop there. To complete the hat trick (or trifecta, which I believe is now the more ­fashionable word) of horror, a well-regarded survey reported a sharp fall in consumer confidence – down seven points to minus 20.

Households are increasingly miserable about their personal finances and the state of the economy – and wary about making major purchases. Consumers were said to be ‘nervously’ awaiting Budget ‘pain’ on October 30.

Which only goes to show that if – as Starmer and ­Chancellor Rachel Reeves have been doing – you talk Britain down enough, it doesn’t just dissuade ­investors from investing, it causes consumers to think twice about spending.

It is all the more reprehensible when you’re dissing the country for base political purposes – so you can blame the Tories for all the bad stuff Labour has in store for us. (Bad stuff it had always planned but just didn’t tell us about before the election.)

All this will come to haunt Labour down the road. But that’s not what they’ve been talking about this week in the Dog and Duck. Folks are far more curious, nay mesmerised, even appalled by Starmer’s appetite for freebies.

For someone who has projected a rather sniffy Roundhead attitude to bourgeois pleasures (his father was a toolmaker, you know) it is quite a surprise to learn that he has accepted more gifts, trips, events and hospitality since 2019 than any other MP — and by a long chalk.

His list of freebies totals an incredible £107,000. This is over 60 per cent more than Lucy Powell in second place with £40,000 (another Labour MP, now Leader of the House of Commons).

More surprising, Starmer’s wife, Victoria, who we’ve been told regularly has no interest in the political limelight, has been in on the act, scooping up £5,000 in clothes etc from Lord Alli, the wealthy Labour donor whose unbounded ­generosity also supplied the PM with £40,000–worth of clothes, spectacles and other gifts in recent years.

You may think this would be an embarrassment for Starmer. After all, Labour in opposition could not have been more relentless – or more pious and sanctimonious – in pursuing Tories with their snouts in the trough (to be fair, there were plenty of snouts and plenty of troughs).

Labour was always flashing its moral ­compass back then. It has only taken several weeks in power to smash it.

By limiting the scope of the winter fuel allowance, the government is forcing even poorer pensioners to tighten their belts this winter while the Starmers have been ­trying on designer belts.

Ministers are always telling us that the government must live within its means. But such strictures clearly don’t apply to the Starmers, who can call on the Bank of Alli – and others keen to curry a PM’s favour – to live beyond their means.

Perhaps most insidious is the hospitality the PM has enjoyed from the Premier League and its clubs, including Arsenal, which he supports. It totals over £40,000 in tickets since the end of 2019 for access to exclusive boxes with lavish catering.

Government rules advise ministers to be very careful taking jollies from organisations regulated by the state — or about to be. Labour intends to regulate football. Starmer is still ­taking the freebies.

So, with the stench of hypocrisy filling our nostrils, you might think, as I say, that Starmer would be ­embarrassed and move to close the matter down, with an apology and a promise of no more troughing. But not a bit of it. Instead the PM ­initially doubled down.

His security team had said they could not protect him if he was in the Arsenal stand. He was safer in a box. The club had made one available, usually costing £8,750 a game but free to its most famous supporter. It was a ‘bit much’, complained Starmer, to expect him to forego his beloved Arsenal.

Well, I have news for him. It’s not. He’s the Prime Minister. It’s a huge privilege but it comes at a price — and a PM has more important things to worry about than football.

Anyway, he can watch the matches on TV, hardly a ­sacrifice when you occupy the highest political office in the land.

But Starmer is infected by a virus first spread by Blair: that essentially middle-class politicians should big up their supposedly common roots by making out to be fanatical football fans. It makes them ‘men of the people’ (they seem to think football is still a working-class game).

 Whatever political gain Starmer thinks he gets from this is dwarfed by the damage his penchant for freebies is doing to him and the government.

The Mail poll shows a massive majority of voters – 58 per cent to 23 per cent – do not think he should accept gifts.

An even bigger majority – 62 per cent to 22 per cent – don’t think his wife should accept clothes.

No wonder that most people – 60 per cent to 28 per cent – think Starmer is failing to clean up ­politics, despite all of his promises.

Nobody should be surprised by this. The country has just suffered from and struggled through a cost -of-living crisis.

It passes all understanding for most people that the Starmer family, with a combined annual income of more than £200,000, can’t buy its own suits and frocks. Especially when Labour had been rightly hard on Tory ­freeloading and cronyism.

Yet Business Secretary ­Jonathan Reynolds was sent out onto the airwaves this week to defend ­’freebies’ as ‘part of the job’ of ministers, who were, after all, entitled to a ‘bit of relaxation’ (as if that was the issue).

He even implied that, since his department touched on almost all aspects of business, if the rules were tightened he would have to turn down every jolly. The poor wee lad.

It took the Tories several years in power to become that out-of-touch with public opinion. Labour has managed it in several weeks.

Even Harriet Harman, Labour’s grande dame, was moved to slap Starmer down, telling him to stop trying to ‘justify’ the freebies, which was only ‘making things worse’. Then, last night, as inevitable as rain on a bank holiday, Starmer, Reeves and Deputy PM Angela Rayner all buckled. Henceforth they would pay for their own clothes. No doubt the country is in awe of their sacrifice.

Suddenly, merely ‘following the rules’ was not enough to ensure probity. Starmer will be hoping it’s a pre-conference clearing of the air. But it’s too little, too late — and it doesn’t end the matter.

A savvy government would have got to grips with the grifting from day one. But Starmer doesn’t seem able to control even his own Downing Street operation. The place is awash with briefing and counter-briefing, all swirling around Sue Gray, his chief of staff, whom Starmer reveres but is turning into a major liability.

The BBC revealed this week that Gray, with a new £170,000 salary, was earning £3,000 more than the PM. She had brushed aside suggestions it would more politically prudent to settle for a couple of thousand less than her boss. So she ended up with £25,000 more than her Tory predecessor.

Starmer approved this rise but it went down like a lead balloon among the small army of special advisers (‘Spads’ in Westminster lingo) Labour has appointed across Whitehall.

Why? Because Gray had sat on the official committee which had been somewhat parsimonious when it came to their salaries. Socialism in action, again.

One Spad complained his pay offer had been ‘pitiful’. Another claimed he’d been paid more when he worked for the Labour Party in opposition. A third joked bitterly that Gray, 67, was the ‘only pensioner to have done well’ out of Labour so far.

Cue an avalanche of anti-Gray briefing accusing her of ‘stunning arrogance’ and worse.

The smaller pro-Gray forces hit back, saying it was all a storm in a teacup. But it comes after Gray was accused of blocking intelligence chiefs from briefing the PM direct, playing a major role in placing Labour sympathisers (‘cronies’ Labour would have called them in opposition) into senior civil service positions, and trying to push through a £310 million refurbishment of ­Belfast’s derelict Casement Park stadium (Gray has many Irish connections).

None of these matters is especially significant on their own. But, when combined with the cacophony of briefing (it’s a wonder they have any time to run the country), it all adds to the sense that Downing Street is already dysfunctional and Starmer doesn’t know what to do about it.

All he’s done is order an inquiry into who leaked Gray’s salary. Leak inquires are usually a feature of the dying days of a government, not of one just starting out. It would be going too far to say the current shenanigans are making Boris Johnson’s Downing Street look orderly. But it’s early days.

‘How have we managed to mess up so royally, so quickly?’ one Spad wondered.

That’s probably an ­exaggeration. There’s plenty of time to get the show back on the road. But Neil’s First Law of Politics is that when you’re on the skids its very hard to stop skidding.

So far skidding Starmer doesn’t know how to stop. Maybe he and his cabinet will exhibit a new maturity in Liverpool. More likely, I fear, Labour will retreat to its comfort zone.

It will be just another orgy of Tory-bashing, which is already wearing thin.