LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer marks 100 days in government on Saturday with little cause for celebration.
The center-left Labor Party led by Starmer won the July 4 election by a landslide after 14 years out of power. But after weeks of news about infighting, giveaways and tax rises, polls show Starmer’s popularity has sunk and Labor is only marginally more popular than a Conservative Party rejected by voters after years of divisions and scandals.
“You really couldn’t have imagined a worse start,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London. “First impressions count, and it’s going to be difficult to turn those around.”
Starmer won the election on a promise to put behind the years of instability and scandals of Conservative governments, boost Britain’s stagnating economy and restore degraded public services such as the state-funded National Health Service.
His government claims it is off to a good start: ending long-running strikes by doctors and railway workers, forming a public clean energy company, ending the controversial Conservative plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and proposing laws to strengthen rights of workers and tenants.
Starmer has traveled to Washington, the United Nations and European capitals in an attempt to show that “the United Kingdom is back” after years of wrangling and introspection over Brexit. But Britain, like its allies, has struggled to make much of an impact in the growing conflicts in the Middle East and the festering war in Ukraine.
The new government has also had crises at home, such as far-right-driven anti-immigrant violence in cities and towns across England and Northern Ireland over several days this summer. Starmet called the rioters “stupid ruffians” and promised to jail those responsible. So far, more than 800 people have appeared in court and almost 400 have gone to prison.
Starmer’s most intractable problem is the stagnant British economy, weighed down by growing public debt and low growth of just 0.2% in August, according to official figures.
The president has warned that things will be “tough in the short term” before they improve. He said public spending would be constrained by a 22 billion pound ($29 billion) “black hole” left by the Conservatives.
One of the government’s first measures was to strip millions of retirees of a payment intended to help them heat their homes in winter. He intended to show his determination to make difficult economic decisions, but it provoked firm rejection among members of the Labor Party and part of the population.
It was also an uncomfortable contrast to news that Starmer had accepted thousands of pounds worth of designer clothes and glasses from a wealthy party donor. Starmer insisted that the gifts were within the limits, but after days of negative headlines he agreed to return 6,000 pounds (almost $8,000) received in gifts such as tickets to see Taylor Swift.
Government officials and advisers have blamed each other for the poor start, with many eyes focused on Downing Street chief of staff Sue Gray, who has reportedly clashed with Labor campaign strategist Morgan McSweeney.
Facing intense media scrutiny — which reported that Gray earned more than the prime minister — the official resigned on Sunday, saying that articles about her “pose the risk of becoming a distraction.” MsSweeney will replace her as Starmer’s team leader.
Anand Menon, director of the political think tank UK in a Changing Europe, wrote on his website that the government had made “avoidable errors” that allowed “a perception of incompetence and dysfunction” to take hold.
The government has now turned its attention to October 30, when Treasury chief Rachel Reeves will present her first budget. The government is betting that a mix of public and private investment will revive economic growth, but to do so it needs to raise billions of pounds. Reeves has ruled out raising taxes on income, sales or corporations, but also says there will be no “return to austerity,” a difficult formula to square. It is believed that he is studying raising taxes on wealth, for example on capital increases or inheritances.
The government hopes to be able to make painful decisions at first and then turn the situation around by showing a growing economy and improving living standards. And he has time, since there are no other elections scheduled until 2029.
Starmer was spending his 100th day in office working at his official residence and insisted he would not “go off course.”
“There are these days and weeks when there are shocks, there is no way to avoid it,” he told the BBC. “It is in the nature of government.”
“It’s been a lot harder than anything else I’ve done before, but a lot better,” he added.
Bale said the government can rebuild trust with voters by showing “not only that it has had a pretty bleak heritage, but that it has a plan to improve the country.”
“What has been missing in some aspects is the issue of vision,” he explained. “I don’t think people have a clear idea of what Keir Starmer, or indeed Labor, is looking for. And that is something they have to raise very quickly.”
