The government must find ways to reconnect emotionally with voters, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, is said to have warned cabinet ministers, in a meeting where the prime minister said they were in “the fight of our lives”.

The prime minister sought to rally his cabinet on Tuesday, telling them to ignore the polls and to prepare to take on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

But sources said that in a presentation, ministers were told the government needed to gain back voters’ trust with three Es, emotion, empathy and evidence.

One source said McSweeney warned that the government had a “deficit in emotion”, though a No 10 source denied he had used that phrase.

Cabinet ministers are understood to have raised concerns about the government’s ability to connect with voters. Starmer said a relentless focus on the cost of living would mean Labour could win the next election, though the prime minister’s new year plan has already been derailed by the need to respond to Donald Trump’s raid on Venezuela and threats towards Greenland.

Starmer, who spent the final months of last year dogged by leadership speculation, said he had strong faith in his cabinet and he would “relish” the fight against Reform.

The latest YouGov poll put the Conservatives ahead of Labour for the first time since the general election, both of them behind Reform, with Labour on just 17%.

Ministers saw a presentation that urged them not to panic about Labour’s dismal poll ratings, likening them to the plummeting popularity of previous governments after taking office.

But the presentation did not include direct comparisons of previous governments with the current government, according to sources. Starmer’s ratings are unprecedentedly low for a new administration, partly because of the effect of a new party dominating the polls.

Starmer said No 10 strategists were looking closely at the re-elections of centre-left governments in Norway, Canada and Australia and how they revived their fortunes by focusing on the cost of living, though Trump’s election was a key factor in the latter two.

The prime minister’s visit to Reading on Monday, which was aimed at highlighting frozen bus and rail fares, was dominated by questions over the future of Greenland and the abduction of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, who has been indicted in New York since his capture by US troops.

Starmer – who travelled to Paris on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” on Ukraine – told his cabinet that the government had to keep a tight domestic focus.

“A Labour government renewing the country or a Reform movement that feeds on grievance, decline and division,” he said. “They want a weaker state, they want to inject bile into our communities, they want to appease Putin. This is the fight of our political lives and one that we must relish.

“I do not underestimate the scale of the task. But I have no doubt about this team. Governments do not lose because polls go down. They lose when they lose belief or nerve. We will do neither.”

Starmer will try to bring focus back to the government’s actions on the cost of living with another UK visit on Thursday after legislation is introduced to end the two-child benefit cap, a key ask of Labour MPs and a measure that will bring almost half a million children out of poverty.

The new Labour deputy leader, Lucy Powell, attended cabinet, saying she was looking forward to “helping to tell the story of whose side we are on”.

Powell told MPs on Monday night that the party would switch to an “incumbency first” model to protect MPs at the next election rather than targeting seats and would support MPs to become “leaders in their communities” and learn how to benefit politically from changes made by the government, for which MPs have so far gained little credit.

She also told MPs in the first parliamentary Labour party meeting of the year that they needed to stop infighting amid continued discontent with Starmer’s leadership.

MPs will be offered workshops by organisers in Labour HQ on how to take credit for improvements in the local area or for policies directly helping constituents that have been implemented by the Labour government, including frozen rail fares, local community and high street funding and the warm home discount extension.

“It’s a big switch organisationally and politically,” a Labour source said. “There’s tools and training the party is providing but Lucy and Anna Turley [the Labour party chair] are leading some political work about what else is needed and how MPs can support and share best practice.”

Powell told the PLP meeting that the government needed to speak more directly about its achievements and said “dark forces” did not want a Labour administration to succeed.

“We’ve got a big argument to make and win. That Labour is on the side of ordinary people addressing the cost of living crisis, rewiring the country in the interests of the many not the few, taking on the vested interests, holding the powerful to account,” she said.