Things can only get better has become a Labour anthem. So associated with the party is the 1993 hit by D:Ream that it was chosen by protesters to taunt Rishi Sunak during his soggy Downing Street speech announcing the general election in May.
Tony Blair’s team picked it as the 1997 election campaign theme tune to hammer home both a message of hope and the promise that life would indeed improve under the new government. It was a down payment on change to come.
Since then the song has been belted out in bars at the annual party conference and embraced as an unofficial road trip anthem throughout the most recent election campaign. Labour staffers like it because they believe it: Labour will be “better” than the Tories.
It’s not just those working for the party who believe it either; there has long been an unspoken sense – fairly or unfairly – that Conservative governments are more likely to be closer to business and therefore act in their interests (bad) while Labour is more likely to be motivated by helping “ordinary” people (good).
It was a message that Sir Keir Starmer repeated throughout the campaign, leaning heavily on the sense that his Government would look and feel more like the rest of the country, keeping his top team honest and accountable.
And the promise that things would be better, different, fairer is the reason why Labour is struggling to find a way out from under stories about free dresses, glasses and hospitality, and why it has the potential to be even more damaging than it might have been for the Conservatives.
Because people did expect better. They expected it would be different because the Prime Minister told them it would be. They thought the new Government would be more like them, and yet, unlike Starmer, they’re not getting their glasses for free.
They listened to Starmer and Angela Rayner criticise the Tories for taking donations to fund their lifestyles – from holidays to wallpaper to free food and drink – and believed that wouldn’t happen on their watch.
Labour MPs were outraged when Dominic Cummings, the man who held the role Sue Gray now does, was awarded a pay rise at a time when nurses were given only a small hike. In a tweet Mr Starmer claimed: “The mask has slipped“. It was liked and retweeted tens of thousands of times.
But reputation is a fragile thing and must be guarded at all costs. Voters are tired of political scandal and not in the mood to be forgiving when their lives often feel much harder than they did years ago.
It’s what makes the Government’s response to these stories about freebies so hard to understand. They have been brushed off as trivial rants, excused as a requirement of modern office and, perhaps most damaging of all, no different from what the Conservatives did when they were in No 10.
This last excuse, made to me by a senior member of Starmer’s team, has the potential to be the most damaging because it belies not just a failure to spot the gaping political bear trap Labour has walked into, but also the arrogance which may prevent them escaping it. Those around Starmer, and perhaps even the Prime Minister himself, appear to believe so firmly that they are the “good guys” that they can’t entertain the idea that anything they’re doing might be bad.
Because while it may be true that previous ministers accepted free tickets, nobody accepted more in the last couple of years than Starmer himself. And yes, freebies have mostly been declared properly, but wasn’t the point of sweeping away the old Tory regime to scrutinise what went before and work out if it should be allowed to continue? To make a change?
Are we happy for prime ministers to get their clothes and outings for free? Are we OK with politicians who tell us they’re motivated by making the lives of ordinary working people better, accepting tickets and passes to events many can’t afford?
As one senior Labour figure told me this week, it is the arrogance of those in No 10 that’s really causing jitters. The failure to understand that arguments over Taylor Swift tickets are having an impact both on morale and also on trust, especially when many MPs are still battling questions from their constituents about winter fuel and the two child benefit cap.
Some within Labour appear so used to having the moral high ground that they don’t understand that this isn’t a given, especially not once you’ve stepped inside No10. Just because you believe you’re the good guys doesn’t mean you are.
Starmer promised a government of service; voters are beginning to question who exactly it is here to serve.
Kate McCann is Political Editor at Times Radio