Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, not pictured, after bilateral talks at the Chancellery in Berlin, Wednesday Aug. 28, 2024.Justin Tallis/The Associated Press
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer marks 100 days in office Saturday with little cause for celebration.
Starmer’s center-left Labour Party was elected by a landslide on July 4, sweeping back to power after 14 years. But after weeks of stories about feuding, freebies and fiscal gloom, polls suggest Starmer’s personal approval rating has plummeted, and Labour is only slightly more popular than a Conservative Party that was rejected by voters after years of infighting and scandal.
“You couldn’t really have imagined a worse start,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics 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 promises to banish years of turmoil and scandal under Conservative governments, get Britain’s sluggish economy growing and restore frayed public services such as the state-funded National Health Service.
His government argues it has made a strong start: It has ended long-running strikes by doctors and railway workers, set up a publicly owned green energy firm, scrapped the Conservatives’ contentious plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda and introduced bills to strengthen rights for workers and renters.
Starmer has traveled to Washington, the United Nations and European capitals as he seeks to show that “ Britain is back ” after years of inward-looking wrangling over Brexit. But the United Kingdom, like its allies, has struggled to have much impact on spiraling conflicts in the Middle East and the grinding war in Ukraine.
The new government also has faced crises at home, including days of far-right-fueled anti-immigrant violence that erupted in towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland in the summer. Starmer condemned the rioters as “mindless thugs” and vowed 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 Britain’s sluggish economy, hobbled by rising public debt and low growth of just 0.2% in August, according to official figures.
Starmer has warned that things will be “tough in the short term” before they get better. He says public spending will be constrained by a 22-billion-pound ($29 billion) “black hole” in the public finances left by the Conservatives.
One of the government’s first acts was to strip millions of retirees of a payment intended to help heat their homes in winter. It was intended to signal determination to take tough economic decisions, but it spawned a sharp backlash from Labour members and sections of the public.
It also sat awkwardly with news that Starmer had accepted thousands of pounds’ (dollars') worth of clothes and designer eyeglasses from a wealthy Labour donor. Starmer insisted the gifts were within the rules, but after days of negative headlines agreed to pay back 6,000 pounds’ (almost $8,000) worth of gifts and hospitality, including tickets to see Taylor Swift.
Government officials and advisers have traded blame for the faltering start, with the focus on Downing Street Chief of Staff Sue Gray, and her reported tensions with Labour campaign strategist Morgan McSweeney.
Amid intense media scrutiny — which produced the revelation that Gray earned more than the prime minister — she resigned Sunday, saying stories about her “risked becoming a distraction.” McSweeney is replacing her as Starmer’s chief of staff.
Anand Menon, director of the political think tank U.K. in a Changing Europe, wrote on its website that the government made “avoidable mistakes” that allowed a “perception of incompetence and dysfunction” to take hold.
The government’s focus is now on Oct. 30, when Treasury chief Rachel Reeves will set out her first budget. The government is banking on a mix of public and private investment to spur economic growth, but needs to come up with billions for the task. Reeves has ruled out increasing income tax, sales tax or corporation tax, but also says there will be no “return to austerity” — a hard circle to square. She is thought to be considering hiking levies on wealth such as capital gains or inheritance tax.
The government is hoping it can take painful decisions early and then turn things around by showing a growing economy and improving living standards. And it has time — there does not have to be another election until 2029.
Starmer was working from 10 Downing St. on his 100th day in office, and insisted he would not be “knocked off course.”
“You get these days and weeks when things are choppy, there’s no getting around that,” he told the BBC. “That is in the nature of government.
“It’s been much tougher than anything I’ve done before, but much better.”
Bale said the government can rebuild trust with voters, if it shows “not only that it’s had a pretty dire inheritance, but that it has a plan to improve the country.”
“What’s been lacking in some ways is the vision thing,” he said. “I don’t think people have that much of a sense of what Keir Starmer or indeed Labour is about. And that’s something they need to put right very quickly.”