‘Worst of any prime minister': Ten moments that defined Labour's first year in power in the UK

Irish Times

2 days ago

At its core, politics is a game of numbers. What share did we get of the vote? How many seats did we win? How much can we raise taxes?
In advance of last July's
UK
general election,
Keir Starmer
's
Labour
Party was focused on just one number – 14 – the time in years it had spent in opposition while the
Conservative Party
ruled.
This weekend, Starmer's government reaches the first anniversary of his party's return to power. It has been a bumpy ride.
The undulating nature of his first year in Downing Street was evident in the never-ending number play around Labour's muddied efforts to define its priorities: the five 'missions' with which it entered government (economic growth, green energy, the NHS, safer streets, education); its 'three foundations' for stability; its 'six first steps' in power.
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By December Starmer was at it again. After a rocky start, he launched 'six milestones', or specific targets, by which he wanted voters to measure Labour at the next election.
Meanwhile, here are 10 moments that defined Labour's turbulent first year in power.
Keir Starmer speaks to supporters at the Labour watch party after the 2024 UK general election. Photograph: Jeff Moore/PA Wire
1. July 4th and 5th 2024: Election triumph, but optimism soon dissipated
Labour recorded a landslide victory with a disciplined campaign in the election on July 4th. It won 412 seats, versus the Tories' 121. As he stood outside Downing Street on the afternoon of the 5th, Starmer promised to show that 'politics can be a force for good'.
Yet the party's victory, though wide, was actually quite shallow. It won just 35 per cent of the vote, less than the 40 per cent share it won under Jeremy Corbyn's in 2017. Voters didn't so much embrace Labour as eject the Tories. Starmer was never popular in polls: journalists in Westminster soon began calling his victory the 'loveless landslide'.
There were early warnings of the challenge to come from
Nigel Farage's Reform UK
. It won only five seats but came a close second in more than 70 constituencies. Starmer now sees Reform, which tops the polls, as a bigger electoral threat than the Tories.
There were also early examples of the sort of petty rivalries among Labour's senior backroom teams that would dog the party all year. On election night, for example, Labour's official staff watch party was held at the Tate Modern gallery. Yet some senior aides of party deputy leader Angela Rayner were not given tickets. They were told by senior HQ staff to go instead to an unofficial watch party held by a private lobbying firm. It was seen as a deliberate snub of Rayner's team by staff loyal to the leader.
A restaurant owner clears debris from the street in front of his restaurant in Middlesbrough, northeast England after rioting and looting in August. Photograph: Yelim Lee/AFP via Getty Images
2. July 30th: Riots explode across Britain
Starmer made a quick start, establishing GB Energy and swiftly ending public sector strikes. But his honeymoon lasted less than four weeks and Britain's social fractures were soon on show. Race riots broke out across England and ran for a week after three young girls were stabbed to death by a lone attacker in Southport, near Liverpool.
About 1,300 people were arrested and 800 charged.
The Irish Times attended some of the sentencings
, including for Peter Lynch (61), who got two years and eight months for taking part in a violent disturbance at a Holiday Inn asylum hotel near Rotheram, Yorkshire. Two months after he was sentenced, he took his own life in jail.
Starmer, who was director of public prosecutions during London's 2011 disturbances, is seen as having handled last year's riots assuredly. Yet his strong performance was badly communicated by his Downing Street publicity team, dysfunctional in the early months.
Keir Starmer during his Rose Garden speech in Downing Street last August. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
3. August 27th: Starmer's gloomy Rose Garden speech
As soon as Labour got the keys to government, it warned of the scale of the financial mess it had inherited.
Rachel Reeves
, the UK's first woman chancellor, said on her first Monday in the job that Britain's finances were in their worst state since the second World War.
Days before the end of the summer recess, Starmer summoned journalists to Downing Street's back garden – they called it a 'rose garden', but it has barely any roses – for a downbeat speech. He claimed the Tories left a £22 billion 'black hole' in the exchequer and warned of pain ahead. Starmer later admitted the speech was too negative and helped to squeeze the hope out of Labour's election win.
Sue Gray, who was Keir Starmer's chief of staff before being ousted. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
4. September and October: 'Free Gear Keir' and Sue Gray
The prime minister was elected partly on a promise to restore probity to British politics after years of what voters saw as low standards. So it was galling for Starmer to get caught up in a sleaze scandal barely less than three months into office.
It emerged Starmer had accepted more than £100,000 of gifts in recent years, including football match tickets, clothing for him and his wife and eyewear. Much of it came from wealthy Labour peer Waheed Alli, a friend of Starmer's chief of staff, Sue Gray.
Meanwhile, a power struggle broke out between Gray and
Morgan McSweeney, a Corkman
and Starmer's closest political adviser, who blamed Gray for not preparing Labour properly for power. She was ousted by mid-October.
Keir Starmer speaking the Labour Party annual conference in Liverpool last September. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg
5. September 22nd-24th: Angst at the Labour conference
For a party that months earlier had won Britain's biggest election victory in 27 years, the atmosphere at its annual conference in Liverpool was fretful and downcast. The conference took place in the middle of the freebies scandal and the Downing Street war between Gray and McSweeney. Labour's poll numbers were already falling fast.
In Starmer's leader's address, he said Britain was 'no longer sure of itself'. He also claimed he had 'changed' the Labour Party into a disciplined machine. Nine months later, the extent to which he had changed Labour was questioned when the supposedly disciplined backbenchers he had lauded forced him into several U-turns on cuts.
UK chancellor Rachel Reeves before delivering 'a proper social democratic budget' in October. Photograph: Lucy North/PA Wire
6. October 30th: Budget tax and spend
This was one of the better moments in the first year of government for many Labour true believers. Reeves let loose with an expansive budget containing large spending increases, particularly on health, funded by £40 billion of tax rises.
There was an audible gasp among opposition MPs and in the press gallery of the House of Commons chamber when the latter figure was announced. Labour members, however, loved it. 'A proper social democratic budget,' one told The Irish Times.
The budget was blamed for stunting hiring because of a hike in employers national insurance. Reeves must hope the heavy investment bears fruit before the next election.
Keir Starmer has been praised for the way he has dealt with US president Donald Trump. Photograph: Carl Court/Pool/Getty Images)
7. February 27th: Starmer charms Donald Trump at the White House
While his he has had an increasingly torrid time in domestic politics, Starmer has shone as a statesman abroad. In what may be the finest moment of his first year, he won over US president
Donald Trump
with the offer of a second state visit to Britain. Since then, he has secured a trade agreement with the US and won Trump's continued backing for the Nato military alliance, albeit at the cost of further investment by European nations.
A view of the entrance to Keir Starmer's house in Kentish Town, north London, after a suspected arson attack in May. Photograph: James Manning/PA Wire
8. May 12th: 'Island of strangers' speech
Overnight an attacker had firebombed the prime minister's north London family home, currently rented out to his sister-in-law while the Starmers live in Downing Street.
Starmer later claimed it had shocked him so much that he hadn't noticed that a speech he gave later that morning on immigration echoed language used by the anti-immigrant politician Enoch Powell decades earlier. The prime minister was accused of using inflammatory wording when he warned that mass immigration risked turning Britain into an 'island of strangers', similar to Powell's references to 'strangers in our own land'.
The speech was believed to have been pitched at voters who may be inclined to vote for Reform.
Pensioners marching on Stormont in October to protest against the cut in winter fuel payments by the UK government
9. May 21st: Winter fuel U-turn encourages more rebellion
One of Reeves's first acts as chancellor was to axe universal winter fuel payments for all but the poorest of pensioners. It hadn't been in Labour's manifesto but she said she needed to do it to fill a £22 billion fiscal 'black hole'.
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Starmer and his government spent the next 10 months denying they would backtrack on the controversial move, before, under pressure from Labour backbenchers, he suddenly flagged a U-turn during prime minister's questions (PMQs) one Wednesday afternoon. It was the first of several policy about-turns that have weakened his authority.
People taking part in a protest in London in June against disability welfare cuts. Photograph:10. July 1st: Backlash and tears over disability cuts
Starmer's first year in government had started in hope but ended in farce, as
Labour rebels forced him into a humiliating climbdown
on £5 billion of disability welfare cuts. He had to offer enormous concessions to his own MPs in the hour before they prepared to vote on his proposals, after a debate in the Commons where some rebels had become emotional as they argued against their own party.
The next day, Reeves burst into tears in the chamber beside Starmer at PMQs. Polling guru John Curtice said he has had the 'worst first year of any prime minister'.