LABOUR has been urged to pull itself together and transform the country after a Cabinet minister admitted the party’s economic performance has been “disappointing” today.

Commons leader Lucy Powell acknowledged the flatlining economy and said people’s frustrations with the party’s performance in office are understandable.

In a series of interviews as Labour approached six months in office, she defended the “difficult decisions” taken by the government but accepted that she wanted to see faster economic improvements.

Ms Powell was challenged about the flatlining economy, the impact of the Budget’s tax rises and the traitorous decision not to compensate women affected by increases in the state pension age.

Asked why Labour’s poll ratings had plummeted, she blamed the “many fundamental challenges facing the country.”

Veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott meanwhile listed a string of leadership failures, saying it was “striking that [Keir Starmer’s] poll ratings are going down the toilet” and are much worse than the party as a whole.

“Somehow the party, the national party, has to pull itself together because at the moment it just seems a bit wobbly,” she said.

While the government “don’t want to have a war on the elderly, unfortunately it does look like it because some of the most controversial policies they’ve taken forward have affected [pensioners],” the former shadow home secretary added.

The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP criticised the government for failing to try for a compromise with Waspi women who have campaigned over the government’s failure to notify them of changes to the state pension age.

“I am a Waspi woman, so I know that when they say they didn’t hear about it, they’re quite correct — I didn’t hear about it, I didn’t get a letter,” she said.

Adding that it was too early for a leadership change, Ms Abbott also criticised the new set of Labour peers, which includes several Israel apologists and Sue Gray, former Partygate investigator and Starmer chief of staff.

She told Times Radio: “I think the time is coming when we’re going to have to look again at how the Lords is selected, and how the Lords goes forward.

“It’s very hard to defend this set of peers who very much refrun lect who the leadership know and like.”

She also questioned the appointment of Lord Peter Mandelson as Britain’s next ambassador in Washington DC, saying she is unsure he will be “as effective as the US ambassador.”

Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths said: “The Labour government has disappointed millions of voters — but not its big business paymasters and the super-rich, nor the greedy spivs who the privatised utilities.

“Perhaps most of all, Starmer’s team have not disappointed the Israeli government and British arms companies, making Labour complicit in some of the worst genocidal crimes of the 21st century so far.

“Nothing this government does on the domestic front can atone for its support of Israel’s murderous bombing and shelling of hospitals, schools, refugee camps and aid convoys in Gaza.”

A spokeswoman for Momentum said: “The tragedy for the UK and the Labour Party is that Starmer and his entourage have no coherent vision for how to transform the UK’s economy.

“Before the election they promised to hit the magic growth button to fund investment, without ever explaining how.

“Labour supporters have been subjected to the pathetic spectacle of Labour ministers begging for investment from predatory companies like BlackRock, while the government continually refuses to tax the rich.

“Only a transformative, unashamedly redistributive programme will deliver the change the people of the UK are crying out for.”