{"id":240074,"date":"2025-07-05T12:24:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T12:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/240074\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T12:24:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T12:24:21","slug":"how-keir-starmer-squandered-his-first-year-as-britains-pm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/240074\/","title":{"rendered":"How Keir Starmer Squandered His First Year as Britain’s PM"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wreckage lays bare a paradox that has beset Labour since it came to power. Its orientation is unfailingly orthodox and conservative, defined by \u201cfiscal restraint\u201d and the defense of established institutions. Yet in a country that needs renewal rather than retrenchment, this kind of politics tends to generate perpetual crises\u2014which have, in turn, caused the party to make a series of shambolic climbdowns<\/a> that have eroded its credibility. <\/p>\n

It would be a stretch to say that Labour has deflated popular expectations. The party owed much of its election on July 4, 2024 to widespread anger at the Conservatives, who had governed for a 14-year period marked by austerity, a chaotic Brexit, perpetual scandals<\/a>, and an infamous run on bond markets when one of the party\u2019s Prime Ministers, Liz Truss, tried to implement unfunded tax cuts<\/a> for the superrich. (The Daily Star began a livestream to see whether Truss or a head of lettuce would have a longer shelf life; the lettuce won<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Labour took office with 64% of seats in parliament despite a modest 34% of the vote. Turnout was at a historic low, with some calling Starmer\u2019s victory a \u201cloveless landslide\u201d<\/a> <\/strong>or a \u201cmajority without a mandate.\u201d<\/a> The party had not sought to distinguish itself from the Conservatives on the basis of ideology: both agreed on the necessity to rein in state spending, the primacy of the special relationship with Washington, and the need to cut migration. The dividing line was the issue of good governance, with Sir Keir\u2014a decorated lawyer who once ran the country\u2019s Crown Prosecution Service\u2014pledging to be a more capable manager. <\/p>\n

But the promise of fiscal discipline has become a straightjacket<\/a>. Reeves has long ruled out tax rises, leaving the government in constant crisis over budgets. Its solution has been to maintain harsh measures like <\/strong>the Tory two-child welfare benefit cap<\/a>. It has removed subsidies that help pensioners to stay warm during winter, sparking such public anger that Starmer vowed to restore them<\/a>. Its attempt to force sick and disabled people into work by reducing benefits is just the latest backlash stemming from these self-imposed spending restrictions. <\/p>\n

The Labour government\u2019s pitch has long been that it can restart growth to better fund the state. It has gone about this by proving its \u201ccredibility\u201d with the markets and deregulating key sectors. Financiers are being encouraged to engage in more \u201crisk-taking\u201d<\/a> and asset management firms are being incentivized to buy up more of Britain\u2019s crumbling infrastructure in ways that will put rich investors first. <\/p>\n

This is a trickle-down agenda for the 2020s, based on giving big business everything it wants in the hope that the rest of the population may someday share in the wealth. The former head of Amazon U.K. has been put in charge <\/a>of regulating private monopolies. The onetime CEO of Microsoft U.K. chairs<\/a> the government\u2019s industrial strategy council. Executives from BlackRock have been granted extraordinary access to key ministers. But GDP growth remains slow<\/a> and public services are still under enormous pressure. Diagnoses of Britain as a \u201cfailed state<\/a>\u201d are increasingly common. <\/p>\n

Naturally, Britons are on the lookout for an alternative. One may be a potential new left-wing electoral vehicle<\/a> <\/strong>launched by <\/strong>the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and others. But for many today, the closest thing on offer is the beaming, cigar-puffing demagogue Nigel Farage, leader of the far right Reform party, whose unimaginative promise to \u201cMake Britain Great Again\u201d and freeze immigration<\/a> has gained ever more traction as the Labour government flounders. Although Reform won just five of 650 seats in the 2024 election, it triumphed in local elections<\/a> in May. Recent polling<\/a> put its support at 34%, and there is growing talk that Farage could become the next Prime Minister<\/a>. Its surge has coincided with a series of riots<\/a> across England and Northern Ireland, in which racists attacked asylum seekers and set fire to their accommodation. <\/p>\n

Rather than working out a consistent line to counter Farage, Starmer has often equivocated. First his government broadcast lurid videos<\/a> of migrants being deported and pledged tough new restrictions<\/a> to prevent Britain from becoming an \u201cisland of strangers\u201d\u2014echoing the words of the infamous Enoch Powell<\/a> in his \u201cRivers of Blood\u201d speech. Starmer would later apologize<\/a>, saying that neither he nor his speechwriters were aware it resembled Powell\u2019s remarks. <\/p>\n

It was yet another example of Labour\u2019s dynamic of prevarication and self-sabotage: <\/strong>failing to win over Reform voters while alienating many of his own supporters. Senior party figures are now reportedly suggesting<\/a> that Starmer could be forced out within months. <\/strong>The lesson is that, in today\u2019s Britain, the refusal to pursue meaningful change leads to perpetual turbulence and instability. Unless Starmer finds a way to avoid the latter, his political survival cannot be assured. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The wreckage lays bare a paradox that has beset Labour since it came to power. Its orientation is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,27004,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764,4616],"class_list":{"0":"post-240074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-freelance","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-northern-ireland","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-wales","19":"tag-world-affairs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114800614626296944","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}