LONDON — The joy of Keir Starmer’s landslide victory in the U.K. general election wasn’t meant to sour this quickly.
But rows over Taylor Swift tickets, welfare cuts and an internal power struggle — on top of Starmer’s gloomy prescription for fixing the nation’s finances — mean the U.K. prime minister will spend his 100th day in office Saturday falling short in the eternal popularity contest that is electoral politics.
Starmer has already hit the reset button once, parting ways with his most senior adviser days before reaching his centenary. The problem is, worse is still to come.
New MPs are jittery about holding onto their seats at the next election, and grandees from the last time Labour was in power are stressing the urgency of turning things around.
David Blunkett, who held multiple Cabinet posts in Tony Blair’s administration, told POLITICO a righting of the ship and setting out a more positive vision “needs to start now.”
“What happens in the next 18 months will be absolutely vital,” he added. “It’s incredibly difficult for a government to claw back trust and backing.”
A new dawn, was it not?
How quickly time moves in politics.
A giddy-looking Starmer was greeted by fluttering Union Jacks held by smiling staffers as he walked up Downing Street on July 5. The night, before he’d overturned 14 years of Conservative rule for his Labour Party, winning a majority on a scale not seen for nearly three decades .
Standing in front of the door to No. 10, the newly-crowned prime minister said the country had “voted decisively for change, for national renewal and a return to politics to public service.”
Starmer said he recognized there was a “weariness in the heart of a nation” after the Conservatives’ painful austerity program followed by the scandals of Boris Johnson and economic mismanagement of Liz Truss.
But even as he spoke, it was already becoming clear the public had decisively voted to oust the Tories not out of a rediscovered a love for Labour, but more through disaffection for Rishi Sunak’s government.
A close look at the election results showed Labour’s victory was shallow. Starmer’s party picked up just 34 percent of the vote, compared to the Conservatives on 24 and Nigel Farage’s insurgent right-leaning Reform U.K. party on 14 percent.
The quirks of Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, and Labour’s highly targeted campaign strategy, meant despite those closer than expected figures, Labour won 411 seats in the House of Commons while Reform got just five.
“We’ve got a soft underbelly — and there’s a lot of it,” one senior Labour MP put it this week in their appraisal of the risk from Reform, which came second to Labour in 89 constituencies. Like others in this piece, they were granted anonymity in order to speak freely.
Nonetheless, July 5 did represent something of a new dawn for the U.K.
Football crazy
A few days later, England’s treasured soccer team made it to the final of Euro 2024 in dramatic, if unconvincing, style. On a high, Starmer found himself in the White House meeting Joe Biden, not long after the winning goal hit the back of the net at the tournament’s semi final. “It’s all because of the prime minister,” the U.S. President told reporters of England’s victory.
It was perhaps the peak of Starmer’s time so far in office, both for his team and his party. Days later, Spain beat England to the title and in the weeks to come disquiet within Labour ranks about difficult financial decisions forced on the government would spill into the open.
Less than 48 hours after the Oval Office high, Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood announced plans to let thousands of inmates out of jail early because the underinvested prison estate was perilously close to capacity.
But there were good times too. Following his duty in a ceremony of pomp and pageantry, King Charles set out the new government’s legislative agenda featuring popular plans to return railways to public ownership, bolster workers’ rights and set up a state-owned energy investment company. There were also planning reforms aimed at boosting the economy and house building, and a strengthening of renters’ rights.
Starmer embarked on a series of meetings with European leaders, partly to prove Britain was “back on the world stage” after a trying time between allies and the rather undiplomatic Boris Johnson. The PM also sought a precious “reset” with the European Union, to ease trade barriers and restrictions built by Brexit.
For now, above inflation pay deals for striking public sector workers across teaching, healthcare and transport appear to have warded off the threat of further industrial action after long-running disputes the Conservatives failed to resolve.
But it was what the government wasn’t doing that most angered left-wing critics within his own party, as well as child poverty campaigners.
Welfare rows
The refusal to scrap the Conservatives’ cap on welfare payments to families with more than two children, introduced at the height of austerity, dealt Starmer his first parliamentary rebellion on July 23.
Seven Labour MPs backed a rebel amendment calling for the policy to be axed. Starmer responded with characteristic ruthlessness, suspending them from the parliamentary party.
It was an important warning of what was to come.
Starmer and his Cabinet ministers by now were really turning up the dial on their downbeat assessments about the state of the nation’s finances they inherited, a situation they did their best to blame on their Conservative predecessors.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves decried a £22 billion “black hole” she said had been caused by Tory financial recklessness, as she rolled the pitch for possible tax hikes in her upcoming budget, due next month.
But the big surprise that day, on July 29, was her decision to restrict winter fuel payments of up to £300 to help pensioners with heating bills to only the poorest people.
Picking a fight with the gray vote is dangerous enough, but the move managed to cast a wider cloud of uncertainty over all age groups and also upset the Labour left, which approved of the universality of the welfare measure.
Labour figures also wondered why more wasn’t done to offer a greater vision for the future pay-off for the hardship the government was promising, with a “carrot and stick approach,” that would suggest its harsher measures would be temporary.
“We don’t have the money for any carrots,” one senior government adviser said this week, however.
The Conservatives took up winter fuel as a cause with which to attack Labour, forcing a Commons vote on September 10 on the subject to heap pressure on Starmer.
With their seven suspended colleagues firmly in mind, the vast majority of those Labour MPs minded to rebel instead chose not to take part in the vote and instead abstained. Only one rebelled, but anguish among Labour MPs was still laid bare.
Violence on the streets
There was a souring of the mood on the streets too, in the form of far-right thuggery emboldened by misinformation on social media at the end of July.
Rioters attacked mosques, asylum housing and police after it was falsely claimed a refugee was behind the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport, a seaside town in the North West of England.
Ukip leader Nigel Farage was accused of stoking conspiracy theories fueling the disorder, and even X owner Elon Musk shared misinformation as he engaged in a public row with Starmer about the upheaval.
The PM canceled his summer holiday with his family to deal with the aftermath of the disorder. The public broadly approved of his tough response to the riots, focusing on ensuring those responsible for racial hatred and violence, both online and on the streets, were prosecuted.
But the mass jailings exacerbated the already alarming overcrowding in Britain’s prisons, and the PM was forced to trigger a scheme to slow the justice system until prison spaces were available. Scenes of freed inmates popping champagne and vowing to vote Labour in perpetuity did not exactly take the bad look of the policy.
Trouble overseas
Labour also had to choppy waters to navigate on the international stage. Driven by the election result which saw a backing for pro-Palestinian candidates but wary of again being plunged into the anti-Semitism row which dogged Starmer’s predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, the new government did its best to walk the tightrope of remaining allies with Israel all while seeking to limit the horrors being witnessed in Gaza.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s move to restrict some arms sales over concerns they could be used in violation of international humanitarian law served to enrage Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Handing Mauritius the Chagos islands to resolve a long-standing colonial dispute and secure the continued use of the American naval base on Diego Garcia ahead of the U.S. election saw Labour face intense criticism from Conservative critics.
Towards the end of August Starmer managed to make it past Tory Liz Truss’s fleeting yet chaotic 49 days in office — but the trouble for the Labour leader was mounting.
Cronyism allegations were brewing as Labour allies received senior roles in Britain’s impartial civil service.
The ethics concerns widened when the Sunday Times revealed that Waheed Alli, a millionaire television mogul and former banker, held a security pass to Downing Street.
A torrent of allegations
It was the first of a torrent of allegations centering on Alli. Starmer would be criticized for accepting thousands of pounds worth of suits and glasses from the donor, along with access to his luxury flat, where the family stayed apparently so Starmer’s son could have a quiet place to study.
Then there was the free hospitality Starmer was accepting, ranging from tickets to Taylor Swift concerts to upgrades at Arsenal football matches. Starmer ended up repaying £6,000 worth of gifts as he came under intense criticism.
As things stand, it all seems to have been above board in terms of the rules. But the court of public opinion has been harsher on a leader who, after years selling himself as a politician there just to serve the public, seemed to be basking in perks while restricting welfare payments.
Meanwhile a storm was brewing around his powerful chief of staff, Sue Gray. Starmer poached the high ranking official from the civil service while in opposition, to prepare for a return government.
Highly unusually for an unelected official, Gray was already a household name.
She had led an official investigation into allegations of lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s time as PM.
Once Gray made it to No. 10 alongside Starmer, she would have wanted to fly under the radar. Instead, her many critics were circling and, fatally, she was making enemies within Labour ranks.
Clashes in Downing Street
Though highly respected by many for knowing just how the Whitehall machine operated, more junior political advisers grew to resent her in a dispute over pay and conditions.
Even more significantly there were numerous reports of a power struggle at the heart of government, with Gray pitted against the architect of the winning election campaign, Starmer’s right hand man, Morgan McSweeney.
Gray was characterized as an overly controlling and restrictive blockage in broadcasting the government’s agenda.
The quarrels led to the extraordinary leak of her salary to the BBC — including the fact she was earning £3,000 more than Starmer himself.
That the state of the infighting had led to the disclosure made Gray’s time at the top seem untenable.
And on Monday, Starmer parted ways with his chief of staff, with Gray acknowledging she “risked becoming a distraction.” The PM replaced her with McSweeney in a shake up of his No. 10 team.
It was an extraordinary reset for such a nascent government, one that exposed the deep dysfunction at the heart of the administration and a clear admission that things hadn’t been going to plan.
Gray had been so close to Starmer that she even joined him at the meeting table with Joe Biden at the White House during his second trip Stateside, in mid-September.
‘McSweeney is not the messiah’
It is now crucial for Starmer that things work out with McSweeney. Losing one chief of staff could generously be described as unfortunate; two would clearly be catestrophic.
Most allies welcomed the shake-up, but new Labour MPs, particularly those in marginal constituencies who were already at risk of losing out at the next election, remain jittery as the initial “wave of euphoria” ebbs away.
McSweeney is “not the messiah,” one backbencher said. “We’re gonna have to get really, really, really lucky, and we’re going to have to do a perfect job.”
Another called for a “change of approach” from Starmer, to take a more high-stakes attitude and “govern like insurgents, not incumbents.”
Pollsters at YouGov currently record Starmer’s net favorability score as -36 — a point lower than the deeply divisive champion of Brexit, Nigel Farage.
But Starmer’s fall was from a very low base. His peak two weeks after the election was zero — so much for a honeymoon.
Tony Blair was the last Labour leader to oust the Conservatives. He entered office with approval ratings of 60 percent and it took three years for this to drop below zero.
That’s despite Blair facing arguably greater blows while in office.
In his first few months Labour had to hand back a £1 million donation from a Formula One boss amid suspicions the sum was linked to the government’s decision to exempt the racing class from a tobacco advertising ban. There were also nearly 50 Labour MPs voting against a cut for welfare payments to single-parent families.
But Blair’s administration wasted little time setting out its vision of things to come, holding a budget within a couple of months that featured a windfall tax on privatized utility companies combined with a cut to corporation tax.
In contrast, Reeves has hesitated on her budget to allow the official forecasters to draw up their assessments to prevent a Truss-style meltdown. But the wait has led to uncertainty and concerns there is little light at the end of the tunnel amid the economic doom and gloom.
Into the gloom
Today, the polls show Labour, not just Starmer, is down. One last weekend saw the party’s lead drop to just one point over the Conservatives.
Luke Tryl, a former political adviser who runs the More in Common think tank behind the study, described the polling plummet as “historically unusual.”
He believes Labour has “misjudged” the mood on the winter fuel allowance. That’s combined with criticism over accepting freebies and all the doom-mongering to aid the drop.
But Tryl reckons the underlying story “rather than Labour is doomed” is that the electorate is particularly “volatile” right now.
“People are really miserable,” Tryll said. “At the moment they’re being told that after all the sacrifices since the financial crisis there’s going to be more.”
On the flip side, volatility means voters may swing back if brighter days come. “They’re unhappy but they’re willing to give them the benefit of the doubt,” is Tryl’s assessment.
Starmer isn’t due to face another general election for nearly five years. But the next big tests at the ballot boxes come in May’s local elections. Then elections in the devolved assemblies of Wales and Scotland expected in 2026 will be key indicators too.
All is not lost
All that comes after the first Labour budget in 14 years, set for October 30. Though Labour is standing by its promise not to raise taxes on “working people,” the forbodeing economic warnings that have characterized its first months in office mean other hikes are likely if the government is to fulfill its promises of rebuilding Britain’s public services and avoid another painful round of austerity.
The government is clearly hoping that the pain today will be outweighed by cheerier decisions in the years to come. “We don’t want a sugar rush of announcements now and then a big crash in four or five years’ time before the election,” the senior government adviser quoted above said.
Party grandees who were there at the 1997 victory harbor some concerns at what they’ve seen so far. One said the budget is a “critical moment” where the party leadership must articulate a clear “direction of travel” after painful decisions.
For David Blunkett, who was serving as home secretary during the 9/11 attacks, there have been “real pluses” in Starmer’s handling of the riots, his early legislation and his work on the world stage.
But he reckons these have been clouded by an unclear narrative of “miserableness,” that has failed to lift the nation and instead allowed for the rows around freebies and infighting to dominate.
Now a Labour member of the House of Lords, Blunkett warned against any semblance of a return to austerity in the budget, urging Reeves against being captured by Treasury “orthodoxy.”
“I hope that after the first 100 days, lessons have been learned, people will do the reset and that we can start motoring,” he said.
“And that can be righted. There’s plenty of time to get that right, but it needs to start now.”
