Sir Keir Starmer has been warned his winter fuel payments U-turn may not be enough to win back voters. Polling expert Prof Sir John Curtice said “doubts have crept in” among Labour MPs over whether he is the right person to lead the party.

The Prime Minister last week announced that there would be a climbdown over the axing of winter fuel payments for most pensioners, which was widely blamed for Labour’s pummelling at the local elections. Prof Curtice said: “These things stick in the memory – so you can change the policy now and you can probably reduce the damage, but it’s difficult to erase some people’s memory.”

His comments come as Angela Rayner yesterday insisted she “never” wants to be Prime Minister or leader of the Labour Party.

The Deputy Prime Minister was asked to rule herself out from the top job after being pressed on whether she leaked a memo she sent to Rachel Reeves suggesting tax rises.

Sir John said questions over Sir Keir’s leadership reflect the “nervousness that has now got into the Labour Party about Starmer and the character of his government, and certainly the party’s standing in the polls”.

He told The Independent: “The authority of prime ministers rests very heavily on their being thought to be a winner for their party.

“The problem that Starmer now has is that doubts have crept into [Labour MPs’] minds as to whether or not…he is going to be a winner in 2029.”

It comes as the Prime Minister is also said to be considering changes to welfare cuts planned by his Government amid the threat of a Labour rebellion.

He is also facing a challenge from Reform UK leader Nigel Farage who is moving to outflank him among Labour’s traditional working class supporters.

The latest YouGov poll put Reform in the lead, followed by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and then the Tories in a historic fourth place.

Rachel Reeves lied about last year’s Budget tax hikes – she’s lying about this year’s too

For once, she was right. But what happened in practice? We got the taxes, but not the growth.

That sums up our hapless Chancellor. What should happen, doesn’t. What shouldn’t happen, does. And there’s no sign of that changing.

Labour won July’s general election on a false prospectus.

Reeves repeatedly insisted she wouldn’t raise taxes on “working people”. Then, once in office, she claimed to have stumbled across a £22billion black hole, which made tax hikes necessary after all.

As Paul Johnson at the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out: “The £22billion ‘black hole’ was obvious to anyone who dared to look.”

But Reeves pretended not to look. She’s a rotten liar. So is Keir Starmer, who no longer cares whether people believe what he says or not.

In last October’s Budget, Reeves slapped inheritance tax on two of the hardest-working groups of people in the country: farmers and family business owners.

And she hit businesses with £25billion in extra national insurance (NI) charges.

Reeves claimed her NI raid wouldn’t hit working people, but the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) disagreed. It said 80% of the cost will fall on workers through lower wages and on consumers via higher prices.

Rachel Reeves said she wouldn’t have to hike taxes again, but she will (Image: Getty)

As journalist Andrew Neil noted over the weekend, Labour campaigned on £8.5billion in tax hikes. In her Budget, Reeves hit us with £40billion, the biggest rax raid in three decades.

She promised £9.5billion in extra spending. We got £30billion.

We mustn’t let Reeves fool us again. Because she’s already given it another shot.

In November, as the country raged about her Budget, a desperate Reeves promised not to hike taxes again.

It’s worth repeating her words in full: “We’re not going to be coming back with more tax increases, or indeed more borrowing. We now need to live within the means we’ve set ourselves in the Budget and those allocations of spending totals.”

To be fair, there were no fresh tax rises in the Spring Statement in March.

But by October, when she delivers her Budget, it’ll be a different matter.

The growth we need isn’t coming. The Bank of England, OBR and IMF have all halved their GDP forecasts for this year.

Reeves’s tax hikes have strangled confidence and activity. Donald Trump’s tariff threats haven’t helped.

She has just £10billion of fiscal headroom left, and that’s shrinking fast. She’ll have to either slash spending or raise taxes again in the autumn to make ends meet.

Last week’s fallout suggests spending cuts are off the table. The £3.5billion of disability benefit cuts announced in March have triggered civil war in the Labour party.

Labour MPs and activists won’t accept more cuts.

Which leaves taxes. Deputy PM Angela Rayner is demanding more and Starmer has refused to rule them out.

So once again, Reeves has promised one thing, and will deliver the exact opposite.

Let’s hope she keeps quiet what she’s going to do in 2026. Taxpayers can’t afford any more of her promises.