In a few days Keir Starmer will mark his first year in office but no one will be celebrating. It seemed so easy in opposition. All he had to do was not be one of those evil Tories he despised so much. But it turns out governing is hard and the attacks he levelled at the Conservatives have since been turned on him.
The anger in the country over his failings is palpable. A detailed seat-by-seat poll found Labour would lose 233 seats if an election was held tomorrow. He has amassed more nicknames than all the Tory leaders he has faced put together. ‘Two-Tier Keir’, ‘Never Here Keir’, ‘Free Gear Keir’, ‘Sir Flip Flop’, the ‘Farmer Harmer’, ‘Sir Kid Starver’ and so on.
In the last 12 months the list of people he has angered includes rape gang victims, pensioners, parents, small business owners, farmers, fishermen, people with disabilities, Brexiteers, the Chagossians and, last but not least, Labour MPs. He is currently on his third U-turn in five weeks. It is not a sign of weakness to alter your course if the situation has changed, but three cavernous climbdowns in just over a month shows just how badly this government is being run.
When the winter fuel allowance cuts were announced just three weeks into the start of his premiership I was so baffled that I repeatedly asked Treasury officials to check the figures. Surely, no politician can be daft enough to take a payment helping people to heat their homes off 10 million pensioners can they?
Turns out he and his hapless sidekick Rachel Reeves were. It took them ten months to come to their senses. Just a couple of weeks later, Starmer announced he would order a national inquiry in the grooming gangs, or more correctly, child rape gangs, after previously insisting it was not necessary. Then this week he was forced into a humiliating reversal over welfare reforms, not for ideological reasons, but because even with an enormous majority his own backbenchers revolted.
Each of the U-turns was so utterly predictable that the levels of self-harm involved demanded an intervention. But it is unlikely Starmer and his team would listen. They have hit the bunker mentality stage, one that really is usually reserved for the end of a government, not the beginning.
That backbenchers, even experienced, sensible ones, are so ready to turn on their leader just a year after he led them to an historic landslide, is astonishing. They should be revelling in their victory, excited by finally being able to put into action all of the things they dreamt of during the wasted years in opposition. Instead they are downbeat, shocked at being the unpopular ones instead of being able to play to the gallery.
Starmer’s approach to leadership is to try to bulldoze things through to show how tough he is. But leadership is about bringing your troops with you. Starmer has failed to tell his backbenchers, or the country, a convincing story about the purpose of this Labour government. His U-turns mean tax hikes now loom on the horizon as the Chancellor needs to find around £4.5billion to cover the costs.
The small boats crisis is getting worse despite Starmer’s election slogan promising to ‘smash the gangs’. As crossings continued to increase earlier this month, one illegal migrant was entering the country every five minutes. Legal immigration has been in the hundreds of thousands for years. Starmer gave a big speech promising to bring down migration by 2029.
But now the PM has admitted what we knew all along – he was just parroting someone else’s words when he gave the address. In an interview with the Observer, Starmer said he “deeply regrets” warning that Britain would become an “island of strangers”. “I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as, an echo of Powell,” he said. “I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either. But that particular phrase – no, it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth – I deeply regret using it.”
The PM said he should have read through the speech properly before using it. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the admission showed Starmer was just “reading the words out, like a dummy. We need a leader, not a ventriloquist”. Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage said: “This absolute proof that Keir Starmer has no beliefs, no principles and just reads from a script. We need a leader that has vision.”
Sadly, we have got a few more years before the country can have a say on that. Happy anniversary!