‘It’s A Shitshow’: After A Year Of Mistakes And U-Turns, Can Keir Starmer Turn It Around?

One year of Starmer’s Labour leadership

Sometimes a moment can capture the political mood better than any speech or parliamentary vote.

Leaving 10 Downing Street en route to his ministerial car before prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, a walk of only a few steps which he has made hundreds of times in the past year, Keir Starmer stumbled.

As his right leg began to give way, the prime minister instinctively reached out to grab the nearest railing to steady himself.

In the grand scheme of things it was a minor mishap. No harm done, let’s just move on.

But for a PM under pressure and whose very political existence is now the subject of open speculation at Westminster, it wasn’t a great look.

If he can’t even leave the house without nearly falling flat on his face, you could hear his critics thinking, how on earth can he run the country?

Underlining how difficult things are right now for Starmer, worse was to follow less than an hour later, as he ploughed his way through PMQs seemingly unaware that his chancellor was in tears beside him.

We may never know the real reason for Rachel Reeves’ distress, but the message it seemed to convey to the country was unmistakeable: just a year on from Labour’s landslide election victory, this is a government which already seems to be emotionally and politically spent.

They haven’t got a narrative and the whole thing’s a mess.

The previous evening, the PM had been forced to make yet another U-turn in order to ensure the government’s flagship Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments Bill was passed at second reading.

The fact that it no longer contains anything at all on personal independence payments demonstrates how much Starmer had to give away to win the support of enough of his rebellious MPs.

The climbdown meant that the £5 billion of savings the welfare reforms were supposed to deliver have now disappeared, leaving the chancellor to plan yet more tax rises to fill the gap.

As a backdrop to Starmer’s first anniversary in the job, it was far from ideal.

“They’ve got a huge majority, but they haven’t got a narrative and the whole thing’s a mess,” said one gloomy Labour veteran.

“I was talking to a senior businessman who said on the day-to-day stuff, the government is actually getting a lot of things right. But fundamentally it’s a shitshow.

“This weekend we should be celebrating the first anniversary of a famous victory, which was an outstanding achievement, but instead we’ve gone straight to the massive hangover.”

Starmer felt compelled to warn his cabinet this week about briefing against Morgan McSweeney, the PM’s chief of staff who has become a lightning rod for criticism of the No.10 operation.

Reeves’s strict adherence to her fiscal rules, which are aimed at keeping a tight rein on government spending, has also been blamed for the government’s woes.

Labour MPs feel worn down by having to defend unpopular government decisions like removing winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners, only for the PM to eventually U-turn on them when the political heat gets too much.

One senior Labour figure told HuffPost UK that Starmer has it in his gift to lift the gloom, but he doesn’t have any time to waste.

“They’ve got three years to recover,” he said. “It’s perfectly doable, but they need to be getting back on track very quickly. Luckily, the Tories are still all over the place. Reform are obviously a problem, but it is a recoverable situation.

“Basically, Keir needs to get a grip. He has to shake things up and some people’s egos will get bruised in the process, but in the end we’ve got to move on.

“Does he want to be remembered as the man who re-established the party and set us on a forward path or does he want to be remembered as the man who blew it?”

Keir needs to get a grip. He has to shake things up.

One Labour MP said the government needs to get on and deliver the change that the country voted for a year ago.

“There has to be an improvement in living standards,” he said. “If we don’t make people feel better off, then we will suffer at the next election.”

The MP warned that Nigel Farage will be the main beneficiary if Starmer doesn’t get his and the government’s act together soon.

He said: “Nobody said it was going to be easy. There’s no political patience out there. People feel worn down and want to see improvements tomorrow, and if they don’t then they’ll vote for Reform.”

There is anger inside No.10 towards the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), who many believe are either unable or unwilling to accept the parlous state of the public finances means tough decisions need to be made.

In the wake of the welfare reform fiasco, one MP was even overheard saying: “I don’t understand why this means tax rises when it’s only a few billion pounds.”

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