Keir Starmer has governed in defiance of expectations. From the seat of 10 Downing Street, every policy announcement eschews some past version of the prime minister: the liberal human rights lawyer, the grey technocrat, the “soft left” prophet who prevailed upon the Labour membership, the bastion of political stability.
There is no consensus yet on the label that best represents Starmer today. Nor does the apparent placeholder, Starmer 2.0, do justice to the gradual-turned-sudden reinvention the prime minister has undergone in recent months. But the journey is marked even if the destination remains uncertain. Every week ends with the political distance between Starmer and the median Labour MP expanded.
The latest bouts of Labour discomfiture are little cause for surprise then. The prime minister is pushing his party — testing its mettle far beyond its natural ideological limits. The expected cuts to departmental expenditure, to be unveiled by Rachel Reeves at the spring statement next week, could see the opposition to Starmer’s reformation reach a crescendo. In the wake of the welfare reforms, the international aid cut, the decision to deny Waspi women compensation — as well as the winter fuel payment cut and plan to maintain the two-child benefit cap, a mutinous sentiment swells in Labour.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, gave ironic voice to the criticisms levelled at the government by its internal critics this week. Staring down the Conservative frontbench in the House of Commons, he declared: “It must be so painful for them [Tory MPs] to watch a Labour government doing the things that they only ever talked about: reducing bloated state bureaucracy; investing in defence; reforming our public services; and bringing down the welfare bill.”
Spare a thought for those Labour MPs seated behind or tuned into Streeting, for whom the clothes of Conservative governance fit ill indeed — presumably provoking some kind of contact rash. But the prime minister continues to raid the Tory closet; and he has rarely looked so politically at ease. For the leadership’s critics on the Corbynite left, Starmer’s sudden resilience corroborates their long-held objections.
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There is a case for the defence, of course. Addressing a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) last week, Starmer sought to clarify his philosophy of government and its material foundations. “The real world is moving quickly and people look to their government not to be buffeted about by that change — not even to merely respond to it — but to seize it and shape it for the benefit of the British people”, the prime minister maintained.
Consider also the prime minister’s message to his cabinet colleagues at an away-day meeting in January. Then, Starmer berated “progressive liberals” who have become “too relaxed about not listening to people about the impact of [immigration]”. He added: “My reflection is that while we are working away the world is speeding up.”
The world is changing, Starmer insists. It’s time Labour changed too.
The prime minister’s PLP speech also served as a preemptive response to the question concerning his motivations: has the government’s sudden focus been coerced by fiscal circumstances first and foremost, or by geopolitical developments?
And just how willing is it? This is not the government Starmer always intended to lead. That much is manifest. But to what extent can the prime minister reasonably profess to be an agent of change, when his structural constraints — geopolitical, fiscal or otherwise — are so imposing?
Critics of Starmer’s welfare measures reject them as a base political choice, necessitated by the government’s fiscal strictures, the dwindling “headroom” they define, and the party’s tax pledges during the election. Critics posit that the welfare reforms are an avoidable consequence of historic miscalculations — on tax policy in particular — that Starmer is too proud to right.
The government’s “the world is changing” maxim maintains, conversely, that the welfare reforms are an overdue reckoning with state excess, which has been exposed anew by diplomatic developments. Starmer pledged to “rewire the state” as early as December upon the appointment of Sir Chris Wormald as cabinet secretary; he would argue that his decisions — on defence, aid, welfare, quangos etc — reflect a strategic understanding of the new demands placed on governments by geopolitics. In other words, trade wars and conflict on the continent necessitate a more agile state apparatus.
In recent months therefore, the prime minister has pointedly reneged on his initial promise of stability. Labour has won no plaudits for its establishment-thinking, due respect for norms and veneration of convention. The moment demands disruption; so Starmer vows drastic action.
The elastic potential of Starmer’s politics, which critics reject as reprobate and opportunistic, has always been its primary source of strength. As much as anything else, the prime minister has stolen the Conservative Party’s capacity for reinvention. No 10 judges that their man — insurgent, unburdened by dogma and ruthless — has been uniquely programmed for this volatile moment. It is surely significant that Starmer’s reformation has proceeded, in large part, according to the playbook long-championed by Morgan McSweeney for progressive premiers. The US presidential election on 5 November reconfigured the political calculus. But the solution Starmer and his No 10 chief of staff have arrived at owes itself to something of a trusted formula.
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The insurgent-in-chief
“Events” are almost always invoked in political commentary for their propensity to hurl governments off course. But the prime minister has harnessed the momentum of history, diplomatic developments beyond his brief and influence, as a mandate for reform at home. The result is a premiership-defining gamble — and a gauntlet dropped at the feet of his opponents.
Reality has sharpened Starmer, not mugged him. His worldview, with actors divided into rival “builder” and “blocker” camps, gives shape to his insurgency — and defines his opponents on his terms.
The PM’s evolution poses manifold challenges to those who rival his premiership. Starmer’s experiential politics has allowed him to shift with the times. It follows that his target, at which Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage have taken aim this parliament, is once more transformed.
There is a trap for the prime minister’s opponents: the government is moving at a pace too fast for its critics, especially its external ones, to understand. Opposition strategies risk remaining hostage to the old order of politics, old binaries, as Starmer seizes the ground geopolitical developments have carved anew.
Steve Bannon, MAGA strategist and pro-Trump operative, would refer to Starmer’s programme as “flooding the zone”.
Badenoch is anything but an experiential leader. Events shape and reshape Starmer’s politics; but new developments, domestic or geopolitical, are always interpreted as vindicating the Tory leader’s a priori worldview. The evidence cannot speak for itself; Badenoch’s ideological instincts refract reality in a guise that leaves her politics not just intact — but substantiated. In this regard, she would consider Starmer’s empiricism as a grave weakness, not a source of strength.
This observation leaves Badenoch ill-suited to one of the primary dilemmas of opposition politics: an opposition leader, of whatever party, is tasked with holding the government to account on a day-by-day basis, literally shadowing its movements. But it is simultaneously tasked with addressing a future political moment — the circumstances in which it will seek election (2029 in Badenoch’s case). Events can and will render stances adopted in the early years of opposition obsolete. Lines in the sand will be washed away by shifting political tides.
Badenoch’s initial hesitancy to pronounce on policy reflected at least a partial understanding of this reality. But her tenure as Tory leader has nonetheless been characterised by brazen statements of intent and battles in empty rooms. There is, in the end, a steely simplicity to Badenoch’s politics — the development of which has been stunted at least since she announced her first run for the Conservative leadership in 2022. Of course, when “the world is changing” — as it has done markedly in the last three years — stasis is regression.
It is an imperfect and extreme example, but the recent decline of the Canadian Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre shows what can happen when an opposition party does not move with the times.
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There is something more realistic about Reform UK’s claim to the future of British politics. The party, still young and relatively energetic, does not suffer from the same reputational deficiencies that shape the Conservatives’ stupor. And Nigel Farage, its leader, is a natural insurgent. Positioned downstream of US president Donald Trump’s, his populist politics suggest he is well-placed to exploit a transnational “moment”.
That Farage has run into trouble in recent weeks is no secret. His battle with Rupert Lowe, formerly one-fifth of Reform’s parliamentary bridgehead, reflects an ideological and strategic schism.
But Farage’s troubles are arguably more fundamental. His embrace of an increasingly unpopular president among Britons looks like a political liability. And there are signs this reality has dawned on Farage. Speaking to Channel 4 last week, he disowned the mantle of “populist” — a comment that can only be considered as a striking sign of the times.
Today, Farage’s vulnerabilities are now as much a topic of conversation in Westminster as his political strengths. As the Trump administration becomes evermore extreme — and unpopular in the UK — Farage’s dilemmas will multiply. The Reform leader will be forced to police opinion in his own party, risking further scuffles.
Events, put simply, have exposed Farage as vulnerable.
Now, this is not to say that Starmer — for whom “events” have proved corrective — will enjoy untrammelled success in the coming weeks. The spring statement will be a major test of Labour’s internal unity and the choices the prime minister has taken to this point. Despite Badenoch’s insistence at PMQs this week, it is not an emergency budget. But it is a significant political moment that could expand the emergent fissures in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
That is the lot of an insurgent: every path is a political minefield.
Electorally, the biggest risk No 10 has taken concerns the government’s progressive flank. Labour has declined measurably as a political force in Scotland since July last year, and the Scottish National Party (SNP) will weaponise Starmer’s announcements next week as evidence of its unique progressive standing — as it has done to this point. The Greens have not made significant strides since the general election, but their very existence as a potential receptacle for discontented progressive voters stands as a threat to the prime minister.
In these terms, it is certainly possible that Starmer’s new programme for government will alienate more voters than it attracts. That is the risk Labour is running.
But there is still a political brutality, a ruthlessness, to Starmer’s approach that begs immediate questions of his opponents. There is a renewed resilience to Labour’s programme for government, politically broad though it is. Starmer is disrupting the dynamics of politics and denying space to his opponents.
At this febrile moment, the prime minister’s political agility has not been matched by his opponents. Farage and Badenoch may not realise they are behind the times until it is too late.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
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Source: Politics