Starmer needs to set out what he believes and how he will achieve it before voters make up their minds for good
It's all been a bit of a Downer Street
JUST 12 months ago Sir Keir Starmer stood proudly on the steps of Downing Street after securing a historic landslide.
He promised a new era of grown-up government, an end to knee-jerk politics that had bedevilled the defeated Tories.
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How hollow, as he marks his first anniversary at No10, those words now sound.
His landmark comes as he licks his wounds over his latest self-inflicted humiliation — his doomed efforts to curb Britain's £300billion welfare addiction.
In the past year his government has executed more U-turns than a Grand Prix driver at Monaco.
The flip-flopping over the disastrous decision to strip some of the poorest pensioners of their winter fuel allowance and a national inquiry into grooming gangs have laid bare Labour's lack of direction.
Sir Keir seems unable to grasp that the great power a landslide brings demands a set of clear, consistent policies and a remorseless drive to secure them.
What has become painfully clear is that Labour were woefully unprepared for the duty of running the country.
The party's first weeks in office were marked by controversy over freebie Taylor Swift concert tickets and clothes for the PM.
To justify policies, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has repeatedly harped back to the £22billion 'black hole' left by the Tories.
But they have splurged billions on pay rises to please their union paymasters and on far-off infrastructure projects.
Starmer 'loses control' as over 1,000 migrants cross Channel in biggest daily total of 2025 – as French cops watch on
Hardly a day goes by without Reeves appearing in another high-vis jacket and hard hat at a factory.
But instead of PR, her time would surely be better spent making hard-headed decisions about how to secure economic growth.
Labour have had wins on the international stage, even if Sir Keir was painfully out of the loop over the US bombing of Iran's nuclear plants.
And NHS waiting lists are coming down.
They have also benefited from Tory disarray, but their failures to tackle issues such as migration have let Nigel Farage's Reform surge in the polls.
The PM must quickly decide whether he should still pursue economic growth or bow to the hand-wringers in his party.
Even his most staunch supporters admit that former lawyer Sir Keir plays better with the judge than the jury.
He has never had a compelling enough story that would explain where his core values lie.
He needs to set out clearly what he believes and how he is going to achieve it.
Before the most important jury of all — the voters — make up their minds for good.
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Powys County Times
19 minutes ago
- Powys County Times
School term dates 'jeopardise Royal Welsh Show for pupils'
Changes to school term dates meaning pupils and families from outside Powys miss the opening days of the Royal Welsh Show have been "strongly opposed" by organisers of the national event. The Welsh Government announced on Wednesday (June 25) that following a consultation into school term dates and holidays, the summer term in 2027 will end on Tuesday, July 20. Only schools in Powys will have finished the term by Friday, July 16, which is three days before the opening day of the Royal Welsh Show in Llanelwedd, near Builth Wells. The Royal Welsh Agricultural Society's chief executive, Aled Rhys Jones, said: 'We are strongly opposed to schools in Wales being open during the week of the Royal Welsh Show. "The Show has always been held during the first week of the school summer holidays and is a highlight of the national calendar. It attracts thousands of visitors - including families, schoolchildren, exhibitors and volunteers - from across Wales and beyond. 'Thousands of young people take part in competitions and activities, gaining hands-on experience and valuable vocational learning. 'While we welcome the decision for schools in Powys to close the week before, it's vital to recognise that the Royal Welsh Show is a national event, not just a local one. 'Its significance to Welsh culture, education, and rural life must be protected.' Education Secretary Lynne Neagle said variations in school term dates and school holidays could cause difficulties for many families and businesses across Wales, and she fully acknowledged there were both advantages and disadvantages to aligning school term dates. 'Reduce footfall' The changes have been met with criticism from the Welsh Conservatives who are calling for it to be scrapped completely because every pupil and family hoping to attend the "culturally significant" show should be able to do so from the start to the end. Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Education, Natasha Asghar MS, added: "These plans will undoubtedly reduce footfall at the Royal Welsh Show by restricting the number of families who can attend its first two days. 'As the Royal Welsh was a major barrier to Labour and Plaid Cymru implementing their deeply unpopular school holiday reform, making this small change now feels like they are laying the groundwork to implement their original plans to rob our children of their summer holidays in the future. The very best livestock attend the Royal Welsh Show. It's a place for champions. (Image: RWAS) Hundreds of thousands of people attend the show every year. 'The Welsh Government cannot ignore the opposition from every teachers' union, as well as the farming, tourism and business sectors. We need a rethink on these dates immediately, and the school holiday reform must be scrapped completely not just postponed." Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Samuel Kurtz MS, said: 'Any changes that jeopardise that ability for young people to enjoy it should be confined to the bin. 'This decision adds to the narrative that agriculture and rural communities are an afterthought for Labour, and never a priority.' A spokesperson for the Welsh Government said: 'We believe there are benefits to having the same term dates across Wales, including helping to eliminate difficulties for parents and school staff who may work and live in different local authority areas. 'The dates for 2026-27 were proposed by the majority of local authorities in Wales, including Powys, Ceredigion and neighbouring local authorities and were supported by a large proportion of respondents to our recent consultation.
Sky News
31 minutes ago
- Sky News
Starmer says he was 'heavily focused' on world affairs before U-turn on welfare bill
Sir Keir Starmer has said he was "heavily focused" on world affairs before he was forced to U-turn on his welfare bill after rebellion by MPs. In a piece in The Sunday Times, Sir Keir said he was occupied with the G7 and NATO summits and the escalating tensions in the Middle East for much of the past two weeks. His "full attention really bore down" on the welfare bill on Thursday, he added. It comes after the government was forced to U-turn on plans to cut sickness and disability benefits after significant rebellion by Labour MPs earlier this week. The government has since offered concessions ahead of a vote in the Commons on Tuesday, including exempting existing Personal Independence Payment claimants (PIP) from the stricter new criteria, while the universal credit health top-up will only be cut and frozen for new applications. Sir Keir defended the U-turn by saying: "Getting it right is more important than ploughing on with a package which doesn't necessarily achieve the desired outcome." He said all the decisions were his and that "I take ownership of them". There have been reports that rebel MPs blamed Sir Keir's chief of staff Morgan McSweeney for the government's approach. Sir Keir said: "My rule of leadership is, when things go well you get the plaudits; when things don't go well you carry the can. "I take responsibility for all the decisions made by this government. I do not talk about staff and I'd much prefer it if everybody else didn't." 1:30 Sir Keir said on Saturday that fixing the UK's welfare system is a "moral imperative". Speaking at Welsh Labour's annual conference in Llandudno, North Wales, Sir Keir said: "Everyone agrees that our welfare system is broken, failing people every day. "Fixing it is a moral imperative, but we need to do it in a Labour way, conference, and we will."
The National
an hour ago
- The National
The creative ambiguity from Keir Starmer is now rapidly breaking down
Nobody, I think, would be at risk of mistaking Sir Keir Starmer for this kind of easy character. He doesn't even have superficial charm. But his political career demonstrates a keen awareness of the importance of telling the audience in front of you what you think it wants to hear, even if that message is wildly at odds with what you might have said a couple of days, weeks, months or years earlier. For fans, I suppose you might describe this as evidence of Starmer's strategic flexibility. To critics, it looks like mendacity. They probably amount to the same thing. These days, savvy modern political analysis tends to assume people-pleasing ambiguity is what cunning political operators should do, particularly before elections. When everyone hates you a few months later, you can wisely look back and observe 'you campaign in poetry and govern in prose'. By then, everyone will have forgotten how prosaic your campaign really was. READ MORE: Scottish manufacturing firm announces 90 jobs face redundancy Roll out a platform of policies before an election, and you are guaranteed to get yourself mired in the details, some of which are likely to be less than fully worked through. Is this scheme fully costed? Are the costings credible? Have you fully thought through the eligibility requirements? If you commit to a particular platform, it's inevitable that your policies will both generate and alienate elements of your support. Almost all policy choices create winners and losers, and the losers may not be inclined to vote for you. Imagine Labour had included winter fuel cuts or Pip clawbacks and cuts in their manifesto. The reaction, I imagine, would have been interesting. And thus the conventional political wisdom says – don't give your enemies a large target. Be vague. Don't commit. As far as possible, don't specify. Deal in vibes instead. Speak of visions and moods and abstract goals. Talk about change by all means, but don't overcommit. Maintain a tight political silhouette. Stay ambiguous. By avoiding standing for anything in particular, there is much more scope for the voters – and indeed, parts of the media – to invent for themselves the details you have failed to fill in. If you have goodwill in your favour, or at least enough antipathy to your opponents to work with, your bland features and featureless policy platform will become a cluster of hopes and expectations. Present the voters with a blank canvas, and the electorate can project their aspirations and hopes on to you, without experiencing anything so discouraging as being alienated by your actual policy ideas or repelled by the principles you actually stand for. (Image: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire) The political cynicism of the press and general public adds a whole other layer to this because if people assume you're speaking out of both sides of your mouth, they might persuade themselves that they – unlike the credulous saps taken in by your fencing and hedging – know what your real intentions are, and happily suppose these real intentions align with their own political preferences. The easiest people to lie to are always those who want to be deceived, after all. And one of the most remarkable – and remarkably prevalent – thoughts about the incoming Starmer administration was the widespread belief, especially among its supporters, that it was basically lying to get elected, on everything from the economy to welfare to immigration. On immigration, I've lost count of the number of folk of more liberal persuasions on the issue who persuaded themselves, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that this embattled Labour administration would herald a shift in official attitudes towards refugee policy and immigration. This is just one area where the creative ambiguity which lifted Labour to power is now breaking down. When you elect to appoint someone from your party's hard right as your Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who already has a track record of crying for 'crackdowns', you know what you're getting, even if it takes 12 months for everyone else to cotton on. Liz Kendall, you might not remember, stood for her party's leadership in 2015. Steered by Morgan McSweeney – now Starmer's eminence gris in Number 10, after the defenestration of Sue Gray, killed off in classic British establishment style with the pointy end of a peerage – the Kendall campaign secured a mighty 4.5% of the vote, trundling in in fourth place, despite widespread and apparently sympathetic boosting of her candidacy in the right-wing media, claiming that the Leicester MP would be the only Labour leadership candidate to 'strike fear' into Tory hearts, presumably because she'd be advocating a policy platform most of them would recognise. (Image: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire) Disabled people have well-founded fears about what Kendall has in mind for them. I imagine the average Tory sleeps soundly in contemplation of this pint-sized terror. This last week suggests her Labour colleagues have been tossing and turning more anxiously of late. So, it seems, has Sir Keir. In an interview published in The Observer on Friday, Tom Baldwin outlined what he characterised as the 'private trials of Keir Starmer', using the tormented metaphor that like Downing Street's front door, Starmer can only be 'unlocked from within'. Baldwin advances the dubious thesis that Starmer has always been most effective when he is making and recognising his mistakes. 'Like someone crossing a minefield, he takes steps backwards, to the left and the right, before moving forward again,' Baldwin writes, claiming this 'may look inelegant or uninspiring, but it's still probably the best way of getting to the other side'. I don't know if Baldwin has any more experience than I do of traversing a killing zone packed with unexploded ordinance, but I'm not sure the lolloping slosh he describes is a particularly sound way of maintaining forward momentum with all your limbs intact – whether you're forging through the Korean Demilitarized Zone or attempting to survive as Prime Minister for more than a calendar year. But alongside the fawning dribble, Baldwin has tempted Starmer into making a series of fairly remarkable admissions in this interview. Baldwin's thesis, essentially, is that when Starmer – a man who claims he has no capacity for introspection, no favourite book, no favourite poem, no landscape of dreams – experiences a clash between the public and private dimensions of his life, emblematised by his front door, a self-pitying truculence surges up and dominates the Prime Minister's political responses. I may have editorialised a bit in this summary – but not by much. Take the first few months of Labour's time in office, dominated by the decision to prioritise cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, Downing Street turf wars over which henchperson should be the henchperson in chief, and uncontrolled briefing about just how many freebies different members of the new government were taking from donors and firms in the form of designer clothes, new specks, sports tickets and corporate hospitality. For this expenses scandal, Starmer blames the dirty-minded people of the press for dragging his wife into it, on the shabby pretext that Mrs S (or 'Lady Victoria Sponger' as some unsympathetic platforms described her) accepted a mere £5000 worth of contributions to her personal wardrobe from Labour donors. The problem, according to Starmer, is that he 'got emotionally involved', losing his usual 'calm' because 'they dragged Vic into it through no fault of her own'. Optics, he tells us, aren't 'substance', and if you think his family shouldn't be cashing in to the tune of thousands of pounds in expensive costumes, then he seems to think you're the one being insubstantial and optical. The adults are well and truly back in charge, as some of you centrist dads used to coo. The Labour leader also seems to blame emotion for his decision in a recent immigration speech to caution us all about the imminent prospect of Britain becoming an 'island of strangers'. Starmer told Baldwin that he delivered this speech in a fog of emotion and minimal preparation after an arson attack at his family home. 'I wouldn't have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell,' Starmer says. 'I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn't know either.' Starmer admits he should have read through the speech properly and 'held it up to the light a bit more' before opening his mouth in public – a remarkable suggestion from someone whose supposedly forensic approach to politics is one of his few and diminishing virtues. As human responses to high-stress situations go, 'accidentally evoking Enoch Powell' is a new one for me.
