Friends of Sir Keir Starmer say the prime minister needs a holiday. After a year of election victories followed by a sharp drop in support – no mean time – the high command of the UK Labor party appears to be tired.
“You need a break, everyone needs a break,” said another. “These are people who have completed the year without a holiday. They crawled to the finish line.” The big question you face Starmer is whether he can come back refreshed from a New Year's break overseas and revive his ailing administration.
The Financial Times spoke to ministers, aides, business leaders and Labor MPs – many speaking on condition of anonymity – to piece together what went wrong for Starmer after his election victory on July 4 and whether the prime minister can turn things around.
His desire to lead a “government of service” has been disrupted by an almost constant stream of disruptions or disruptions: the summer riots, the charity scandal, the departure of Sue Grey, the collapse of the Budget.
“He's very upset about how the first few months have gone,” said one Downing Street insider. It is not only a waste of time but a waste of political money.
In public, Starmer is irreverent. Asked by the House of Commons Communications Committee last week if he would have done anything differently, the prime minister said: “No.” He touted reforms in planning, pensions and rail deregulation among his government's achievements.
Yet no prime minister in recent times has seen such a tragic fall in public support in such a short period of time. Some Labor MPs have begun debating who could replace Starmer and lead Labor into the next election.
There is now broad agreement in Number 10 and the Treasury that the £1.5bn cut in winter fuel payments to 10mn pensioners in late July was a huge political mistake, which sowed the seeds for many of the government's problems later.
“We should have asked more questions,” admitted one official involved in the decision, referring to the belief that chancellor Rachel Reeves was too ready to accept the idea of austerity that had been promoted by the Department of Finance.
The decision increased the feeling about the new Starmer government that Work it would be little different from the Conservatives, who had just been ousted after 14 years in power. Starmer's acceptance of £32,000 in free suits and glasses added to that statement.
John McTernan, a former Labor Downing Street aide, said: “Cutting petrol payments over the winter was a big mistake because it was done out of context, with a four-month gap between the election and the Budget. It had a significant impact in shaping the perception of this government. “
Reeves hailed the winter fuel tax cuts as evidence of the need to take “difficult decisions” to deal with what he claimed was “the worst economic climate of any government since the second world war”.
High numbers of employees agree that the low message is overdone, which contributes to the loss of business confidence. “We were depressed,” said one minister in the cabinet. “We may have done the right thing but we didn't have a story to explain why we were doing these things.”
The ministers agree that the party was not prepared for the government. “Discussions to reach before the elections did not start in time,” said one minister, referring to the ongoing discussions between the opposition politicians and the civil service to prepare the government's plan.
Grey, Starmer's former chief of staff, is widely accused in Starmer circles of a lack of preparedness, not only in terms of policy but also in terms of personnel. Another minister said: “The whole process of appointing ministers was a mess.
Gray was eventually forced out of his job by Starmer in October, shortly after the prime minister returned from a Labor conference in Liverpool feeling more like a wake than a victory party.
“After the conference, Keir was determined to change things,” said one Labor official. “People were just in a state of shock. There was a shock to the government, then riots, then a union conference. It wasn't just Sue's fault.”
Then came Reeves's Budget on 30 October, an event which caused a major split between businessmen who had been loyally led by Labor before the election. Economic recession and falling business confidence followed.
The sense of betrayal caused by Reeves' 25bn national insurance hike for employers was huge, but it had a negative impact on the economy. A test to measure confidence in the product and hiring plans have fallen through sharply; the economy is good.
“He is not up to the task,” said one FTSE 100 executive. “The collapse of confidence in the business world has been a major disaster.” I think it's overdone, but it happened. “
The cumulative effect of all these restrictions has been to destroy morale at the core of Starmer's administration. “There's a bit of a confidence issue,” admitted one person who works closely with Starmer.
December's relaunch efforts saw Starmer outline six “measures” of a policy to target his government's power and resources, but he has generated more headlines with his claim that some civil servants were “relaxing in the cool bath of relegation”.
Another priest said: “I don't understand where that comes from.” “I would be upset.” Starmer then had to write to angry civil servants to try to quell the unrest.
Starmer's supporters believe he can turn things around in 2025. Tom Baldwin, the prime minister's biographer, said that “for every great job he's done, he's had a rough start,” referring to a rough start to his role as Labor leader and champion. as director of public prosecutions.
“He tries different things until he finds something that works,” Baldwin said. “It's not bright or encouraging, but it's not only a way to dig a hole, but it's also the best way to govern the country.”
Starmer's core team is finally emerging, with veterans of the Tony Blair era brought back into the fold. Jonathan Powell and Liz Lloyd, Blair's Downing Street supporters, were brought back to reprise their roles on foreign policy and home reform, respectively. Lord Peter Mandelson, a New Labor veteran, will take the lead role as an American diplomat.
Pat McFadden, a Cabinet Office minister and former Blair fixer, and Lord Spencer Livermore, a veteran adviser to Gordon Brown, met regularly with Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's chief of staff, to strategize and end political infighting. The media team has been strengthened.
Starmer's allies say he will “roll up his sleeves” and get on with the job, although any deterioration in the economic outlook – or a damaging fall in US president-elect Donald Trump's trade policy – could force Reeves to return later in 2025 to continue his political career. harmful tax increases.
There is hope in the Starmer camp that Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, is not the political threat they first feared. A Downing Street insider said: “He was worried about how things would look in the House of Commons – that he would look like a white man 'talking about a man' to a black woman. He handled it well.”
Starmer, however, is worried about the rise of Nigel Farage's Reform UK, which could pose a threat to Badenoch's right but Labor strategists fear that in the end great danger and at its party. “People are extremely afraid of Hlaziyo,” said another minister.
Starmer's team says they won't make the mistake of deploying the “Pied Piper strategy” adopted by US Democrats before the 2016 presidential election, when they spoke earnestly to Trump in hopes of destabilizing Republicans and taking them down the rabbit hole. .
Trying to talk to Farage in the hope that he can draw Badenoch into the Reform crowd could easily backfire, according to Labor strategists: “If you do that, you might suddenly find yourself asking 'what have we created?',” said another. Another said, “There is no template for the center left to bash a celebrity.”
Starmer's party agrees that the prime minister needs to roll up her sleeves and prove to voters that the main left government can still deliver. “He's upset, everyone's upset,” said one Downing Street insider. “We have to show people that we are on their side.”
McTernan said the Labor government reminded him of Eric Morecambe's joke about playing “all the right notes but no . . . in the correct order”, he added: “The fundamentals are correct, the communication has not been so good, but that is better than the alternative.”
Should Starmer and Reeves go into 2025 trying to inject some hope into a depressed, almost deadly political debate? Another Labor minister seemed unconvinced: “I'm not sure if Rachel and Keir are good people.”