Keir Starmer comes back to reality

Accusations of nepotism, sex scandals, Boris Johnson’s Corona parties or the luxurious renovation of his official residence: When Keir Starmer was still opposition leader, he never missed an opportunity to accuse Conservatives of moral corruption and a lack of integrity. Now Starmer has been Prime Minister himself for two and a half months – and instead of “Partygate”, “Frockgate” is suddenly making headlines.

The reason for the furor are prestigious dresses that a rich Labour donor paid for Starmer’s wife Victoria and that the Prime Minister declared too late. Starmer himself is also said to have received suits, designer glasses and football and concert tickets. The total value of the gifts is said to be around £100,000. The tabloid Daily Star, which once compared Liz Truss’s expiration date to that of a head of lettuce, called the Prime Minister the “king of parasites”.

A hard hand against troublemakers

Starmer has not broken any laws. But he shows little political tact. Critics argue that the Labour leader should have foreseen that the zero moral tolerance he showed towards previous governments would come back to haunt him.

So Keir Starmer can celebrate his great election victory in July when he arrives in Liverpool on Sunday for the Labour Party conference. But in just ten weeks in office he has gambled away more political credit than Labour supporters would like.

Starmer’s time in government began with an unexpected challenge. In England and Northern Ireland, xenophobic riots broke out after the murder of girls in a dance school. As the former head of the Attorney General’s Office, Starmer reacted to the unrest with a hard hand. The rioters felt the full force of the British criminal justice system. And Starmer’s law-and-order policy was well received by the people.

Pragmatic technocrat

Overall, Starmer presents himself as a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. He has not found a magic formula for migration policy. But he is neither trying to manage the problems nor is he afraid to take inspiration from the border protection of the Italian right-wing nationalist Giorgia Meloni – despite the outrage of the left wing of the party.

In foreign and security policy, he only slightly adjusted the course of the previous conservative government. The decision to ban the export of some weapons to Israel because of the risk of war crimes in Gaza was criticized as a political signal, but in practice it changed little.

The Prime Minister is a hawk when it comes to Russia. Unlike the hesitant American President Joe Biden, Starmer would be willing to allow the Ukrainians to use Western long-range missiles on targets in Russia. In his relations with the EU, he proclaimed a thaw. But no concrete and substantial changes to the current Brexit regime are foreseeable.

Complaints about the “black hole”

Starmer is attacking the Conservatives all the more fiercely in the field of domestic policy. “Everything is much worse than we thought,” said the Prime Minister in August during a speech in the garden of his official residence. Due to overcrowded prisons, the government had to release prisoners early. Starmer also complained about a “black hole” of 22 billion pounds in the state budget, the true extent of which the Conservatives had concealed.

The intention is obvious: voters should remember the Conservatives’ failure for a long time to come. Labour also wants to shift the political responsibility for the tax increases that Starmer is likely to present to the population when he presents the draft budget at the end of October – contrary to his campaign promises.

In this way, Labour is trying to beat the Conservatives at their own game. When Gordon Brown handed over the reins of power to David Cameron in 2010 after the financial crisis, a Labour minister left his Conservative successors in the Treasury a note saying “There is no money left”. For years, the Tories rubbed Labour in the face, saying that they had ruined the state finances and were therefore responsible for the Conservative austerity measures.

It remains to be seen whether Starmer’s calculations will work. The hole in the budget is to a large extent the result of the Conservative legacy. But it is also the result of political decisions by the Labour government, which, for example, agreed with the unions on costly pay increases for junior doctors and rail staff.

Controversial heating subsidies

The fact that voters already see Labour as responsible is evident in Starmer’s most controversial decision to date: the abolition of heating subsidies for pensioners, which is intended to relieve the state budget by 1.3 billion pounds. The government no longer wants to hand out subsidies indiscriminately, but only to those pensioners who are really in need. But pensioners who live just above the poverty line will feel the impact of the move. The organisation Age UK writes that two million senior citizens are at risk of getting into financial difficulties this winter due to high energy costs.

Starmer pushed through the measure with a firm hand despite opposition from within the party, demonstrating courage and assertiveness. At the same time, his approach appears tactically clumsy. Instead of announcing the step as part of a package of austerity measures for other sections of the population, the government only targeted pensioners. The conservative opposition is now gleefully exploiting their disappointment. The tabloid press is probably already planning winter reports about freezing senior citizens who blame Starmer for their predicament.

The criticism is reflected in the opinion polls. 46 percent of the population now have a negative opinion of Starmer – the highest number since 2021. 29 percent would vote for Labour in an election, after the party won almost two-thirds of all House of Commons seats with 35 percent of the vote in July.

Starmer is still unimpressed. He dismisses the scandals and criticism as superficial media hype. He told the BBC that he is willing to make unpopular decisions in the long-term interests of the country. But so far Starmer has only promised the British people hardships. Now he will have to quickly convince them that he can also offer them a future with improvements in their living conditions.