Sir Keir Starmer ‘badly needs a holiday’ owing to the ‘relentless strain’ of the job, friends of the Prime Minister have said.

After a bruising start to his premiership and a record collapse in personal ratings, the friends said that Sir Keir ‘needs a lot of soothing and a lot of buoying up at the moment’.

No 10 denies that the PM’s morale is anything other than sky-high, but a friend said: ‘He talks a good game about needing to take the unpopular decisions now, and expecting this resistance, but I don’t think he realised quite how unpopular they – or he – would be.’

The Prime Minister is planning to take his first holiday since the election over the New Year.

No 10’s struggle to grip the agenda despite a majority of 165 seats has raised questions about the demands of the job in the modern era – and whether Sir Keir will even last the full electoral term.

One senior Downing Street official said: ‘Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair managed to last a decade, but they were in a different league – and the world was a different place.

Thatcher had to worry about the BBC, ITV and four or five serious national newspapers; Blair had a few more outlets to consider. But with the proliferation of social media it is now a constant game of whack-a-mole to prevent storms erupting.

Sir Keir Starmer ‘badly needs a holiday’ owing to the ‘relentless strain’ of the job

The Prime Minister is planning to take his first holiday since the election over the New Year

One senior Downing Street official said: ‘Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair managed to last a decade, but they were in a different league’

‘At any one time you can be simultaneously deciding whether to authorise an attack on a terrorist target by studying live drone footage, while welcoming the Girl Guide Association to a reception at No 10 and clearing a statement of tribute to a dead celebrity. Every minute of every day is like that.’

Sources say that one of the reasons why Sir Keir was reluctant to sack Sue Gray as his Chief of Staff was that she limited his workload by restricting access to him.

The problems for Sir Keir, who is now as unpopular as Jeremy Corbyn was at the end of his time as Labour leader, started soon after the election when Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced she was ending universal winter fuel

payments. This was followed by the highly controversial changes to inheritance tax for farmers.

The Bank of England has warned that Ms Reeves’s decision to raise the employers’ rate of National Insurance and the national living wage would lead to ‘zero’ growth for the final quarter of this year.

On top of this, ministers last week U-turned on a pledge to compensate the ‘Waspi Women’.

Labour backbenchers worry that this ‘shameful’ decision could help to render dozens of them as one-term MPs. The question being asked is whether the Prime Minister will last even that long.