Keir Starmer’s double victory in securing trade deals with India and the U.S. this week still isn’t enough to pacify restive lawmakers in the U.K.’s governing Labour Party.

Last week, the British premier faced a breakdown in party discipline after hemorrhaging seats in local elections dominated by the insurgent populist Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. party. Starmer responded with two of his best days in office, sealing a free trade deal with India on Tuesday followed by a pact with President Donald Trump on Thursday that cut U.S. tariffs on cars and steel.

But for many in Starmer’s party, it’s the domestic agenda that counts. Spooked by poor poll ratings and Farage’s ascendancy just 10 months after winning power, Labour Members of Parliament are agitating for changes to policies including cuts to disability handouts and pensioners’ cold weather payments.

Labour is in the midst of what one Starmer ally described as a freak-out. While his leadership has previously been credited with instilling impressive loyalty from the party ranks, it is now fraying with mounting public criticism of the premier’s approach from across factional divides.

“The prime minister has shown strong leadership internationally which must now be matched at home,” a caucus of Labour MPs in northern England called the Red Wall Group said in a statement earlier this week. “Our voters told us loudly and clearly that we have not met their expectations,” they warned, calling for a reversal of the winter fuel cut — a demand unchanged by the trade deals that followed.

Those MPs represent many of the areas where Reform has gained ground. The right-wing party won a parliamentary special election, two mayoralties, more than 670 new local seats and control of 10 councils last week, a result that surprised even Labour’s own strategists and set off a wave of largely anonymous recriminations briefed to the media.

A separate group of around 40 Labour MPs have also written to Starmer calling for him to cancel a tightening of disability benefits, describing them as “impossible to support” and threatening a rebellion at a parliamentary vote expected before the summer.

Both of those policies center attention on Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, who has sought savings to mend Britain’s stretched public finances. Several MPs who spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity blamed her choices for Labour’s worsening approval ratings. A YouGov poll of voting intentions this week put Labour on 22%, its lowest in more than five years, and Reform on a record high 29%.

Labour MPs also suggested Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff in Downing Street, was more suited to campaigning and political strategy than his current job overseeing the day-to-day running of government.

For Starmer’s allies, the party outbursts are a source of increasing frustration, especially coming during a week when the government was working hard to finalize deals with India and the U.S. that would protect British jobs, and putting the final touches to an immigration plan to be published next week which aims to help tackle an issue that has bolstered Reform.

One Starmer backer said some backbenchers were being naive calling for a political reset already, accusing them of using the local election results as an excuse to push their own policy priorities. They said it was remarkable that MPs were publicly attacking Starmer and Reeves so soon, pointing out there are four more years until the next general election and that it would take time for the public to feel the results of falling interest rates and National Health Service waiting lists.

A second expressed disbelief that after leaving a meeting about how the economy appeared to be turning a corner this week, they looked online to see Labour MPs queuing up to lambaste the government.

A third supporter of the prime minister suggested many Labour MPs are learning the wrong lessons from Farage’s successes. Many in the party still hold a liberal-left mindset typical of a decade ago that saw Labour’s job as defending people on benefits and opposing the political right on immigration, the person said, arguing that the British public had since shifted significantly toward more skeptical positions on both.

The politics of the coming years will not so much be divided along traditional right and left lines, but will be more about how the government can restore a sense of fair play among voters on issues including the economy, crime, justice and immigration, they added, suggesting that much of the dissent in Labour was coming from MPs who didn’t like or understand that new reality.

It is not right-wing or anti-Labour to think the country cannot afford an exponentially rising benefits bill, that law and order have broken down, legal migration is too high and illegal migration is out of control, they said.

Downing Street has commissioned detailed polling that breaks down the most important issues across the political spectrum, to work out which areas they should prioritize to retain their majority. The top three are the cost of living, the NHS and immigration. The latter issue has been particularly prominent this year amid record irregular migrant crossings in small boats from France and the soaring cost of housing asylum seekers.

While immigration is the “biggest driver” of Reform’s success, “what happened last week and feelings of ‘broken Britain’ go beyond immigration alone,” said Luke Tryl of the pollster More in Common, who held focus groups ahead of the local elections. He cited a “wider disillusionment including anger that towns and high streets are still being overlooked and left to decline.”

“Tackling people’s justified anger at the state of the public realm and investing in improving it” will be key to the government’s chances of success, he said. “Dealing with crimes like shoplifting or vandalism will be just as important in addressing public anger and disillusionment.”

(Ailbhe Rea contributed to this report.)

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