Open Editor's Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories for this weekly newsletter.
The author is an FT contributing editor
It's harder than it looks. The saying goes that politicians campaign in poetry, but are forced to govern in prose. For Sir Keir Starmer, the five months since Labour's election victory have closely resembled a journey from the parade ground to the trenches.
The most recent firestorm comes from women who are protesting against an increase in the state pension. Conversely, Starmer sided with women in their 60s and 70s who claimed they were being treated unfairly. Independent experts agreed with them. Yes, but now the prime minister says the government cannot afford to pay the compensation.
These Waspis (women who oppose the inequality of the state pension) are not alone. I to tear of a winter fuel allowance for all but the poorest pensioners fueled the rebellion. Business leaders, who had been actively campaigned while Labor resisted, are now bitterly complaining that the ever-increasing national insurance contribution will hurt investment and employment. Farmers took to the streets against the imposition of inheritance tax on agricultural land. Starmer's poll ratings have plummeted.
The economy is not helping. Workers have bet the bank on reviving growth. Rachel Reeves' budget has restored credibility to the government's financial management. It also provides much-needed funding to keep the NHS running and start fixing broken public services. But the package did not inspire confidence. Growth has stagnated and inflation appears stubborn.
Looking at the Conservatives' sad economic legacy says the Treasury has done more good than bad. Handouts to wealthy retirees and tax breaks to investors buying farmland are meaningless in good times. And who can blame ministers for the mantra that it was the Tories who brought down the economy? The mistake is to think that the Worker will be appreciated for the pain of fixing things.
Ministers cannot expect the benefit of the doubt from the media. The 5-prime-prime-in-8 years psychodrama of the post-Brexit Tory implosion and the rise of fast-judging social media have turned political reporting into a game of “gotcha”. Common currency is hyperbole. The embattled government is seen as mired in crisis and power struggles among aides testify to the erosion of the prime minister's authority.
Those with long-term views will remember that even successful prime ministers have bad habits. When, in the autumn of 1980, Margaret Thatcher made a defiant promise that “the Lady was not a reformer” the majority of the country and the right group of her party rebelled against the economic policy of shock treatment. Tony Blair's prime ministership was marred early on by a far worse revolt against welfare cuts than Starmer faced. Five months into his first term, Blair felt compelled to publicly claim he was a “straight man” amid allegations of financial influence.
None of this is to say that the Starmer government has not made mistakes. If Labor didn't know the exact size of the funding hole left by the Conservatives, it became clear enough before the election that rebuilding public services would require huge tax increases. Most clergy still seem to think it is enough to blame the Tories. A surfeit of campaigning and a lack of governance – that's one old Whitehall way of putting it. Over time, good policy produces good public relations. The back doesn't hold.
Things are getting worse. The unpopular choice between tax increases and spending cuts will not go away. Foreign policy is scarce in the Labor prospectus. In office, Starmer found that Britain was facing the biggest national security threat since the end of the cold war. To deal with Vladimir Putin's threat and Donald Trump's disdain for NATO, the government will need to spend more on defense. Much more. The money will have to come from somewhere.
The government will reinvest political capital in rebuilding Britain's relationship with the EU. The economic and security implications of a close arrangement speak for themselves. But so far, Starmer is unwilling to leave behind a campaign of ideas that has seen Labor fear accusations of “selling out” in Brussels.
That news is not a problem at all. The government has an invincible majority. Reduced to only 121 seats in the House of Commons, the Conservatives have chosen in Kemi Badenoch a leader in whom many members of Parliament have little confidence. Denying guilt over defeat, the party remains bitterly divided over how to respond to what appears to be a growing right-wing threat from Nigel Farage's Reforms.
So Starmer has time to watch the storm. The danger is not the prolonged unpopularity of the people, but the feeling that the government is a prisoner of the situation. The prime minister will never be a grand vision. And the idea is not what Britain wants at the moment. But in difficult times, governments must demonstrate a strategic intent that extends beyond the scope of conventional policies. There is a perfectly good story to be told about how Britain can find a way to win again as a modern, and vital, European country. It needs a narrator.