Sometimes a moment can capture the political mood better than any speech or parliamentary vote.

Leaving 10 Downing Street en route to his ministerial car before prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, a walk of only a few steps which he has made hundreds of times in the past year, Keir Starmer stumbled.

As his right leg began to give way, the prime minister instinctively reached out to grab the nearest railing to steady himself.

In the grand scheme of things it was a minor mishap. No harm done, let’s just move on.

But for a PM under pressure and whose very political existence is now the subject of open speculation at Westminster, it wasn’t a great look.

If he can’t even leave the house without nearly falling flat on his face, you could hear his critics thinking, how on earth can he run the country?

Underlining how difficult things are right now for Starmer, worse was to follow less than an hour later, as he ploughed his way through PMQs seemingly unaware that his chancellor was in tears beside him.

We may never know the real reason for Rachel Reeves’ distress, but the message it seemed to convey to the country was unmistakeable: just a year on from Labour’s landslide election victory, this is a government which already seems to be emotionally and politically spent.

The previous evening, the PM had been forced to make yet another U-turn in order to ensure the government’s flagship Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments Bill was passed at second reading.

The fact that it no longer contains anything at all on personal independence payments demonstrates how much Starmer had to give away to win the support of enough of his rebellious MPs.

The climbdown meant that the £5 billion of savings the welfare reforms were supposed to deliver have now disappeared, leaving the chancellor to plan yet more tax rises to fill the gap.

As a backdrop to Starmer’s first anniversary in the job, it was far from ideal.

“They’ve got a huge majority, but they haven’t got a narrative and the whole thing’s a mess,” said one gloomy Labour veteran.

“I was talking to a senior businessman who said on the day-to-day stuff, the government is actually getting a lot of things right. But fundamentally it’s a shitshow.

“This weekend we should be celebrating the first anniversary of a famous victory, which was an outstanding achievement, but instead we’ve gone straight to the massive hangover.”

Starmer felt compelled to warn his cabinet this week about briefing against Morgan McSweeney, the PM’s chief of staff who has become a lightning rod for criticism of the No.10 operation.

Reeves’s strict adherence to her fiscal rules, which are aimed at keeping a tight rein on government spending, has also been blamed for the government’s woes.

Labour MPs feel worn down by having to defend unpopular government decisions like removing winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners, only for the PM to eventually U-turn on them when the political heat gets too much.

One senior Labour figure told HuffPost UK that Starmer has it in his gift to lift the gloom, but he doesn’t have any time to waste.

“They’ve got three years to recover,” he said. “It’s perfectly doable, but they need to be getting back on track very quickly. Luckily, the Tories are still all over the place. Reform are obviously a problem, but it is a recoverable situation.

“Basically, Keir needs to get a grip. He has to shake things up and some people’s egos will get bruised in the process, but in the end we’ve got to move on.

“Does he want to be remembered as the man who re-established the party and set us on a forward path or does he want to be remembered as the man who blew it?”

One Labour MP said the government needs to get on and deliver the change that the country voted for a year ago.

“There has to be an improvement in living standards,” he said. “If we don’t make people feel better off, then we will suffer at the next election.”

The MP warned that Nigel Farage will be the main beneficiary if Starmer doesn’t get his and the government’s act together soon.

He said: “Nobody said it was going to be easy. There’s no political patience out there. People feel worn down and want to see improvements tomorrow, and if they don’t then they’ll vote for Reform.”

There is anger inside No.10 towards the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), who many believe are either unable or unwilling to accept the parlous state of the public finances means tough decisions need to be made.

In the wake of the welfare reform fiasco, one MP was even overheard saying: “I don’t understand why this means tax rises when it’s only a few billion pounds.”

Flushed with the success of forcing the PM to U-turn on welfare cuts, some rebels made it clear they will now try to force him to scrap the two-child benefit cap – a move that would come with a £3.5bn price tag.

That prompted one No.10 insider to observe: “They are aware they’ve just spent that money, right?”

A cabinet minister told HuffPost UK it was time for some Labour backbenchers to come into the real world.

“You can’t have a situation where MPs club together and force a decision that costs £5bn and then dump all the consequences on the chancellor,” he said.

“If these things are collectively decided, they need to be collectively owned. The PLP can’t think this is a free lunch, that we’ll move on next to something like the two-child benefit cap and say the chancellor will have to deal with that. It’s been very unfair to load all that on her.

“Labour MPs think somehow somebody else will deal with it, that you can tax more or borrow more and it’ll all be fine. But when you tax private schools, farmers, businesses, there’s always a big pushback. There isn’t a free little lever that you can just pull.”

French president Emmanuel Macron is in London next week to address parliament and hold talks with Starmer on how France can work with the UK to stop asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats.

Bringing down immigration was a key Labour pledge in the election, and yet the number of asylum seekers making the perilous journey is at a record high.

Party strategists believe fulfilling that promise is essential if the government is to show voters that it is delivering.

But Chris Hopkins, political research director at pollsters Savanta, said it may already be too late for Starmer.

“I’m not sure he can turn things around,” he said. “It’s too early to completely write them off – we’ve seen far stranger things than a Labour comeback – but public opinion is far easier to lose than win back and the prospects for this government don’t look good.

“They lack the policy agenda to capture voters’ imagination, they lack the fiscal headroom to bring about tangible changes to people’s lives, and they’re not proving themselves to be united, competent or strong either.

“It’s no surprise at this stage that so many 2024 Labour voters have buyer’s remorse, and when the Tories and Labour fail, the untested alternatives suddenly look significantly less risky for an increasingly promiscuous electorate.

“Labour’s electoral coalition was always going to be difficult to hold together, but I think the speed and scale of the collapse from such a strong position is a surprise, and exactly what the country didn’t need from its next government.”

Starmer will spend his anniversary weekend away from Downing Street, and his allies insist he will not be brooding on the turmoil of recent days.

“He’s not someone that sits and dwells on things,” said on senior government official. “There are obviously lessons to be learned, but he’s focused on what we can do to fix things rather than spend all his time chewing over the past week.”

Labour’s first 12 months in office have been marked by a series of self-inflicted errors, gaffes, controversies and climbdowns.

The next election may not be until 2029, but Starmer and those around him know that he cannot afford for the next year to be as bad as the last one.