Angela Rayner admitted people are “impatient for change” amid Labour’s plummeting popularity.
The Deputy Prime Minister was grilled about Nigel Farage’s Reform UK overtaking her party for the first time in a national opinion poll this week during an appearance on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
Put to her that Labour’s popularity has “fallen off a cliff”, Ms Rayner said: “We’ve had significant challenges.
“The system with the prisons for example which we were one day away from total catastrophe, we had to deal with that very quickly.
“Nobody is going to think it’s popular to release prisoners early but we inherited that situation. We dealt with the unrest over the summer very effectively.”
Asked about stripping millions of pensioners of winter fuel payments, she went on: “We had a £22 billion black hole.
“We protected the most vulnerable pensioners, we put the household support fund in for those that are not eligible for pension credit, we’ve invested in our public services, within our NHs, our schools.
“We’re already implementing the changes we said, the border command, we’ve already sent over 9,000 people that are illegal in this country back outside of the country.
“So we’re already delivering within the five months we’ve been in power but I understand that people are impatient for change and that’s why Keir is pressing ahead and asking a lot of his Cabinet and the civil service and local authorities to say people need to see that change and we all need to be part of that delivery.”
It comes after a poll by Find Out Now showed Reform, which has five MPs, had overtaken Labour for the first time.
The survey put the rebranded Brexit Party on 24%, with Sir Keir Starmer’s party on 23% and the Tories in the lead on 26%.
The Prime Minister set out six “milestones” in a major speech last Thursday in a bid to reset his premership after just five months in No 10.
