How Keir Starmer messed up his first months in office

Friends of Sir Keir Starmer say the Prime Minister needs a break. After a year of major electoral victories – with no respite in between – the high command of the UK Labor Party appears weakened.

“He needs a break, everyone needs a break,” a confidant said. “These are people who haven’t taken a break in a year. They are crawling to the finish line.” That is the big question. Starmer Will he be able to return after a New Year’s holiday overseas and revive his ailing administration?

The Financial Times spoke to ministers, aides, business leaders and Labor MPs – mostly anonymously – about what went wrong after Starmer won the July 4 general election and whether the prime minister can turn things around.

His desire to run a “government of service” has been thwarted by constant distractions or mistakes: the summer riots, the clothing donation scandal, Sue Gray’s resignation, the budget collapse.

One Downing Street insider said: “He is very disappointed with the way the first few months have gone.” “Not just a waste of time, but a waste of political capital.”

In public, Starmer is defiant. Asked last week whether he would do something different from the House of Commons Liaison Committee, the Prime Minister said: “No.” He cited reforms in planning, pensions and railways among the achievements of his government.

However, no prime minister in recent memory has fallen short of popular support in such a catastrophic way. Some Labor MPs are already discussing who will replace Starmer and lead Labor into the next election.

Now, a £1.5bn cut in winter fuel bills for 10 million pensioners at the end of July has been broadly agreed between No 10 and the Treasury, sowing the seeds for many of the government’s problems.

“We should have asked more questions,” said one official involved in the decision, admitting that Chancellor Rachel Reeve was too ready to scrap the cost-cutting proposals long promoted by the Treasury.

The decision has fueled sentiment around Starmer’s new government. Labor It will be little different from the Conservatives who were ousted after 14 years in power. Starmer’s acceptance of £32,000 worth of freebie clothes and glasses added to that narrative.

John McTernan, a former Labor Downing Street aide, said: “The winter fuel cut was a serious mistake because it was taken out of context, during the long four-month gap between the election and the Budget. It had a fundamental effect on correcting the perception of this government.

Reeves hailed the winter fuel freeze as evidence of the need to take “tough decisions” to address what she said was “the worst economic legacy of any government since World War II.”

High numbers of employees admit that the failure message has been overdone, contributing to a lack of business confidence. One cabinet minister said: “We are very dark. We may have done the right thing, but we lack a story to explain why we do these things.

Ministers admitted that the party was not ready for government. Speaking about the discussions between the opposition politicians and the civil service to prepare a government plan, a minister said that “the communication talks did not start sufficiently before the election”.

Gray, Starmer’s former chief of staff, was widely criticized in Starmer circles for not only policy but staff preparedness. “The whole process of appointing ministers was a failure,” said one minister.

Gray was finally forced out of her job by Starmer in October, soon after the prime minister returned from a Labor conference in Liverpool, feeling more buoyed than the victory party.

A Labor official said: “After the summit, Kiir was determined to turn things around.” “People were in shock. There was the shock of being in government, then the violence, then the party conference. It wasn’t all his fault.

Then came Reeves’s Budget on October 30, an event that sparked a huge row with the business community over Labour’s indolence before the election. Economic slowdown And falling business confidence followed.

The fallout from Reeves’ £25bn increase in national insurance for employers has had a huge impact on the economy as well. Surveys measure manufacturing confidence and Employment plans have failed well The economy has expanded.

“She’s not up to the job,” said one FTSE 100 boss. “The collapse of confidence in the business world is devastating. I think it’s overdone, but it happened. “

The cumulative effect of all these setbacks is an erosion of morale at the Starmer administration center. “There’s a bit of a trust issue,” says one person who works closely with Starmer.

An attempt to restart in December made further headlines when Starmer unveiled six policy “chapters” to focus government energy and resources, but said some civil servants were “comfortable in a deep recession bath”.

“I don’t understand where this is coming from,” said one minister. “I was upset,” Starmer continued, having to write to angry civil servants to calm the row.

Starmer fans As Director of Public Prosecutions.

“He tries different things until he finds something that works,” Baldwin said. “It’s not flashy or inspiring, but it’s not only the best way to get yourself out of a hole, it’s probably the best way to lead the country.

Starmer’s senior team is finally taking shape, with veterans from the Tony Blair era returning to the centre. Jonathan Powell and Liz Lloyd, the stalwarts of Blair’s Downing Street operation, are returning to reprise their roles in foreign policy and domestic reform respectively. Lord Peter Mandelson, the new Labor patriot, will play the key role As the American ambassador.

Pat McFadden’s Cabinet Office minister and former Blair fixer and Lord Spencer Livermore, a veteran adviser to Gordon Brown, meet regularly with Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, to plan strategy and smooth political lines. The media team has been strengthened.

Starmer’s allies have said they will “roll up their sleeves” for the job, although any deterioration in the economic outlook – or a damaging failure of US President-elect Donald Trump’s trade policies – could force Reeve to step back for more politics in 2025. Affecting tax increases.

There is some hope in the Starmer camp that Tory leader Mrs Kimi Baden is not the political threat she initially feared. A Downing Street insider said: “He was worried about how things would look in the House of Commons – a white man might be seen as ‘cheating’ on a black woman.” He handled it well.”

Starmer, however, is concerned about the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which may initially pose a threat to Badenoch’s right but which Labor strategists fear will eventually come to fruition. A serious accident For the party as well. “People are very scornful of reform,” said one minister.

Starmer’s team He said he wouldn’t make the mistake of deploying the “Pied Piper strategy” adopted by US Democrats before the 2016 presidential election, when they actively denounced Trump as potentially alienating Republicans and sending them down the populist rabbit hole.

Labor strategists say trying to talk Farage into the public space of reform in the hope that he will drag him into a reformist position could easily backfire: “If you do that, suddenly ‘what have we done?’ You might ask. Another said, “There is no precedent for the center-left civil rights to beat.”

Starmer’s team admits it can still deliver a centre-left government in which the prime minister can roll up his sleeves and prove to the electorate. A Downing Street insider said: “He was upset, everyone was upset. “We have to show people that we are on their side.”

McTernan said the Labor government reminded him of Eric Morecambe’s joke that “all the right notes but . . . In the right order”, “the fundamentals are correct, the connections were not good, but this is better than the other one.”

Should Starmer and Reeves go to 2025 and try to inject some optimism into a hopeless and deadly political debate? “I’m not sure Rachel and Keir are good people,” said a Labor minister.