Starmer’s first 100 days has doomed Labour’s hopes of defeating SNP

The Herald on Sunday sat down with a series of left-wing intellectuals, historians, economists and politicians to gauge just how well – or not – Starmer’s first 100 days have gone. The symbolic milestone passes this weekend.

The historian

First, there is Douglas Beattie, a former distinguished Scottish journalist with the BBC and Reuters who became a prominent trade union adviser, and is now a Labour Party historian. Also a former Labour councillor, Beattie confounds expectations: he backed independence, but is now “federalist”.

Douglas Beattie

His new book How Labour Wins And Why It Loses is a fascinating exploration of the party – an indispensable guide to understanding what Labour once was and what it’s become.

“Labour wins when it’s offering hope,” Beattie says. Ramsay MacDonald’s fight against mass unemployment in the 1920s, Clement Attlee’s welfare state, Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology”, and Tony Blair’s “things can only get better” mantra all offered “a vision that there’s a better life”. Starmer offered “change”, with an implicit message of hope.

However, optimism has quickly faded around Starmer. Beattie recalls being asked at book events: “Where’s the hope now?” The freebies scandal and the removal of pensioners’ winter fuel payments disappointed many Labour voters. At the heart of the problem, says Beattie, lies a quite different attitude now dominant within the party, that’s “very unlike” earlier periods, such as 1945, when Labour presented a full-throated vision of social democracy. Labour have “hedged their bets – they’re trying to plonk themselves in the middle of what they think is the electorate”.

Starmer won with his change mantra, but that centrist urge has created among voters “a frustration that things aren’t moving as quickly as they’d like. By contrast, in 1945, Attlee was very clear he was going to affect huge change incredibly quickly”.

Beattie says: “Great swathes of industry were nationalised almost instantaneously, the NHS was brought in within two to three years, the welfare state was quickly established. Britain changed fundamentally. You’d a cradle-to-grave society created where people were cared for throughout their life.

“What Labour has to do now is keep showing it’s bringing change – every day in small and large ways.”

Labour is evidently hampered by the fiscal rules it has adopted when it comes to effecting rapid change. Beattie refers back to Attlee again, saying the 1945 administration was both “incredibly brave, and powered by a moral imperative to change the country”.

Starmer’s Labour must create “a country that’s owned by the people and works for the people. There’s much today’s government could take from the moral imperatives of the past”. He sees hope, though, in plans to nationalise England’s railways, and the New Deal for workers. “They’re excellent initiatives.”

The same cannot be said about the winter fuel payment. That was “a bad political choice which backfired, and doesn’t sit with the instincts” of Labour.

The cut was driven by a desire to show financial rigour. “It’s now almost taboo to talk about borrowing. But if you borrow for the long-term as a stimulus, you can grow.”

If the “unnecessary” fiscal rules were “canned”, it would be “good politics” and give Labour “more room” to deliver “the change they ran on during the election”.

After all, Attlee created the welfare state – which required enormous spending – when Britain was broke.

“Labour is wary of the idea they’re profligate on spending, or take decisions that spook markets. But do they need to box themselves this way? No. Just tip the hat to 1945. Be braver – there’s such an appetite for change.”

Despite his critique, Beattie says that given we’ve only reached the 100 Days stage “it’s too early” to fully judge Starmer. However, it was a mistake to begin the new government targeting pensioners rather than the rich, Beattie feels. However, he notes we’re still yet to see the Budget.

Beattie believes –given his closeness to Labour’s hierarchy – that Chancellor Rachel Reeves will “offset the fire and brimstone around the winter fuel payment”. There’s talk of taxing wealth harder.

Reeves certainly needs to change the narrative, as voters when they back Labour “believe they’re voting for the good guys, not the nasty party”.

Labour “must always be an anti-poverty party. Ministers must ask themselves in whose interests they serve. Stick to that and they won’t go wrong”.

Beattie adds: “Labour is talking about ‘change’, ‘mission-led government’, and ‘national renewal’, they’re not saying: we’re going to build, we’re going to nationalise great swathes of industry.

“My worry is that when they talk of NHS reform that some within the Blairite wing mean more privatisation. Most people don’t want that. When they hear reform, they think of progressive reform that’ll help them.”

Eventually, Tories will get their act together, Beattie says, and present a challenge. After all, the Conservatives redefined themselves as pro-welfare state post-1945 and defeated Attlee in 1951. However, Beattie thinks there’s no chance of revival with either Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick as leader.

Voters don’t forgive Labour if they feel poorer. Wilson promised that the pound in people’s pocket was safe, but sterling devalued and he lost. “Labour loses if they’re not on the side of working people – Starmer must show that vision. But people might not wait 10 years to see that plan executed.”

Although the freebies scandal was a dreadful start for a new government, Beattie thinks Starmer believed “he was just doing what was the norm”. He knows Starmer and says he’s “a genuine, humble, warm, decent person”.

However, Starmer can’t talk about “tough choices while at the same time accepting donations for clothes”. Beattie speculates lack of experience – few ministers have been in government before, including Starmer –might explain the stumbles. “They’re learning on the job.”

Being too left wing isn’t the curse it’s imagined, Beattie says. While Jeremy Corbyn did lose the 2017 election, he moved from being rank outsider to “depriving the Conservatives of their majority on the most left-wing platform since the 1980s, and hemmed Theresa May in with the DUP in a confidence-and-supply arrangement”.

Jeremy Corbyn

So Corbyn’s socialism was partly successful: increasing MPs by 30 with 40% of the vote. The 2015 election saw Labour lose 26 MPs on just 30% of the vote.

On policy, Starmer should emulate Gordon Brown, who is relentless on child poverty. Beattie rates Brown –despite his fall – as one of Britain’s greatest political minds.

When it comes to the next election, Starmer’s fate rests on whether “the economy is improving with the demonstrable effect of helping the millions who need it, rather than for a very select few at the top”. So, Starmer should reintroduce Sure Start.

“The first 100 days haven’t been ideal.” That’s reflected in the party mood. Beattie was at the Labour conference and, rather than a “great celebration”, there was a “sense that things were happening in a vacuum. People were downhearted, there was a lack of energy”. Starmer needs “to learn” from the mistakes of the first 100 days and understand that, in voters’ eyes, “he has a lot to live up to”.

Beattie discussed Scotland with Starmer, and the Prime Minister knows that when it comes to future electoral success, just like 2024, “the path to victory runs right through Scotland”.

Most Scots “want a socially and economically democratic country. There’s no Labour Party without Scotland”. However, Beattie believes Labour’s success at the election was down to a key swing constituency: former Labour voters who switched to the SNP and have now returned to Labour. Politically promiscuous and left wing, they could switch again.

Like the Conservatives, Beattie says the SNP will eventually “rejuvenate”. The battleground for Labour in Scotland is very different to England, where Starmer concentrated on regaining “red wall” seats from the Tories.

Although the SNP “can act neoliberal”, it “presents as centre-left. Labour now has to deliver on people’s expectations in Scotland”.

So, how dependent is Anas Sarwar’s fortunes on Starmer? “If there’s a perception Labour isn’t anti-poverty –not acting in the interests of the millions who need help – or perceived to be an austerity party, that’ll hamper Anas.

“Don’t think for a moment they don’t know that. The task [of Scottish Labour] is to influence the Labour government to carve out a prospectus for Scotland that speaks directly to the expectations of Scottish voters. If the Westminster government is listening, they’ll take that advice.

“You must keep winning elections – at council level, in Holyrood – because it’s about political momentum. Voters across the entire country will see that if you win in Scotland, you’re a winning party and it’s a springboard for the next General Election. Holyrood is supremely important to Labour’s chances of getting back into power. It’s all to play for in Scotland.”

Beattie suspects the next election “might be sooner than we think” if Starmer turns the economy around and “goes early for a second term”.

While applauding the revoking of the Rwanda plan, Beattie worries Labour has “given too much oxygen to this frankly nonsensical idea that Britain has been ‘swamped’ by migrants. It’s the language of the far right.

“It’s outrageous, ridiculous. Labour should give it no credence. If Labour lean into it even an inch, it’s simply not grown-up politics and undermines their own history”.

While “millions feel left behind” and hopeless, rather than following the Tory or Reform path of “lashing out” at migrants, Labour should say “we have the prescription, we’ll look after your interests, we’ll go back to the future and use the power of the state to protect you”.

If Labour sticks to that, the far right won’t succeed. Instead of acting like “John Maynard Keynes never lived”, Labour should “borrow to provide stimulus – don’t lean into austerity”.

The professor

THERE is much harsher criticism of Starmer’s first 100 days from a team of left-wing academics, politicians, think-tankers, and economists. Called the Common Sense Policy Group (CPG), they have just published the book Act Now. It’s billed as the new Beveridge report, which led to the welfare state.

Act Now – which will delight anyone who wants a better, fairer country – calls for “a new social contract” between government and the people. Decades of neoliberal economics, the groups feels, smashed the bond between voters and politicians.

Chaired by Northumbria University’s professor of public policy Matthew Johnson, the team road-tested their ideas and found them affordable and popular, regularly backed by 70% of those polled, including Tory voters.

Matthew Johnson

Their key policy suggestions for Starmer include: a basic income to tackle endemic poverty; a Green New Deal; nationalisation of energy; a national social care service integrated with the NHS; investment in early years and education to reduce crime and improve productivity; improved public transport; large-scale house building and infrastructure projects to tackle the housing crisis and boost the economy; reform of lobbying to end political corruption; and a national pharmaceutical service to reduce the cost of medicines.

They also propose increased capital gains and inheritance tax, fairer proportional property taxes instead of council tax, and taxes on luxuries like private jets.

Johnson says the manifesto was written to deal with “the situation we find ourselves in today: a Labour government that’s persuaded itself the very policies that would build a decade of national renewal are unfeasible, unaffordable and unpopular. “They’re clearly wrong – only a very narrow set of interests believe ideologically in their inaction”.

Labour, says Johnson, must “get us back the utilities, infrastructure and resources that were gifted to a range of private entities that often have no interest in Britain and no capacity to promote our interests by running services effectively”.

Britain was “sold”, and ordinary people now effectively “rent” their own country from private corporations. Starmer has “an ideological attachment to the very policies that led us to this position … There’s no justification for maintaining policies that stunted growth and productivity, reduced the tax yield and massively increased poverty and inequality. The public know this”.

Regarding re-election, Labour’s current vote share is “unsustainable” – at 500,000 less than 2019 – unless it creates policies which improve people’s lives. He notes pointedly: “It remains to be seen whether the successors to the current leadership will grasp this.”

The economist

HOWARD Reed, CPG’s main economist and former IFS and IPPR chief economist, says if there’s easing of fiscal rules, which free up at least £50 billion, that would show Labour “recognises the pennywise, pound-foolish incompetence at the heart of the British government for decades”.

Howard Reed

He adds: “Cutting the winter fuel payment and much-needed funding for adult care on the basis of a ‘£22bn black hole’ was simply a political decision in the pursuit of being perceived as ‘economically competent’. That ‘competence’ has failed us for decades.

“Investment has always been the best way to drive growth and productivity, and improve health and wellbeing in the process … but the first instinct of the government was to return to a failed austerity agenda precisely because they misunderstand both economics and public opinion.

“Nobody but a very small group of New Labour nostalgics sees value in ‘forward to 2010’ as a vision for Britain.”

The policy expert

DR Elliott Johnson, CPG’s academic expert on inequality, says government policy has “gone drastically wrong over decades and we’ve reached crisis point”, as evidenced by the extent of child poverty and foodbanks.

“However, there are ways out of this devastating era.” Starmer must end the policy of “addressing problems downstream” – in other words, picking up the pieces after poverty wrecks lives – and start “addressing the causes directly”.

Elliott Johnson

Johnson says there’s been such “a recasting of government” since Thatcher’s era that “politicians believe the state can effectively do nothing. You see that in Starmer’s first 100 days. What’s happened so far? A series of reports and reviews”.

An economic shift is needed away from creating “passive wealth” –through landlords and shareholders – to “productive work that underpins economic growth”. Equally, Labour should shift the tax burden from “productive work towards passive wealth as that’s the incredible unfairness in the system that stifles growth, and causes our productivity problem”.

Starmer’s team buys into the Thatcherite mantra that “government should be run like a house” – a notion Johnson dismisses. “The right wing has been outstanding in terms of dominating the narrative.”

However, privatised energy won’t protect Britain from external crises like war. Nationalised energy will, he says. The risk of mass unemployment in any green energy transition should be negated by cast-iron guarantees that oil and gas workers get jobs on equivalent salaries.

People vote for policies which make them better off, so if Labour wants to retain power it must “de-risk” voters’ lives, offering security and a proper “safety net” in an era when “social care bankrupts families”.

So Starmer has to shift perspective on what government should and can do. The winter fuel allowance cut was Labour “mimicking” the Tories by trying to show “economic competence” and creating an “out-group” –this time pensioners instead of the disabled or unemployed.

The economic change Britain has seen has been “like a frog boiling in water”: slowly wealth was transferred from the public and into private hands. Today, that’s “given licence to the idea that some poverty and foodbanks are fine. It’s offensive this is acceptable”.

It also makes no economic sense. Poverty leads not just to lower productivity, but increased risk of jail, addiction, poor health, homelessness, and entering the care system – all of which costs the state much more than would be incurred tackling inequality.

“Give kids in poverty money to take them out of poverty, don’t give them services for the next 80 years to mitigate the effects of poverty. It’s ridiculous – bad economics.”

The consequences of Labour’s lack of ambition in the first 100 days are evident. “Starmer is now more unpopular than Rishi Sunak was,” says Johnson. “We’re at the level of terrible unpopularity which makes people unelectable. They’ve lost all momentum. They must get that momentum back.” Moving on House of Lords reform would be a symbolic act of the party’s commitment to equality.

Failing to regain momentum, with progressive policies, means backbench MPs will start worrying about losing their jobs, Johnson warns, and that will risk the “entire government being derailed”. Backbench MPs will clearly think in their own “self-interest”.

Indeed, continuing “political and economic failure, means Starmer will lose, and it may be sooner than the next election”. Starmer, in just 100 days, “no longer presents a popular technocratic government, and he’s no longer personally popular – if he ever was.

“There’s only a certain point you can maintain that, until there’s an internal challenge. Many MPs are probably quite ambitious”. If Labour doesn’t realise the old model of government “no longer works, it will lock them out of power for a generation”.

Labour panics about “looking economically incompetent”, yet the public narrative around austerity has changed. Voters “have realised we can’t keep doing this for another 10 years and hope we’re going to get growth”. Britain is a “case study” in why austerity doesn’t work.

“We’d growth after the Second World War as there was infrastructure spending – it’s how you stimulate the public and private sector.”

Investing in infrastructure and getting people into good jobs so they can spend, is “how to fill this notional £22bn black hole in finances. For every £1 invested in infrastructure there’s a 2.74 times return. If you invest in health there’s huge returns to the economy”.

The far right will prosper if “there are nothing presented as an alternative to them”. Fixing housing, the NHS, training and education would all undercut far-right claims that asylum seekers are damaging the country. What’s needed is “a domestic agenda that supports people’s standards of living”.

The politician

JAMIE Driscoll, a key CPG figure, was Labour’s much-lauded North of Tyne mayor, though he later broke with the party over the two-child benefit cap. Labour, he says, needs to remember that government should “work in the interests of citizens”, not “assist the private sector”.

Starmer should concentre on “equality, the social determinants of health, building up community wealth, and levelling up”. Labour’s aim should be “promoting freedom from domination”. What does he mean by that? He replies: “Neoliberalism says it’s all about freedom, but what freedom do you have in a supermarket if you’ve no money?”

So far, Driscoll jokes, “Starmer has hit the ground reviewing”. He was at Labour’s 2022 conference and spoke with former head of the civil service Bob Kerslake, who said this of Starmer’s team: “My worry is they don’t have any plans. They keep saying they’re not committing to this or that. What’ll happen is you’ll get into government, be buffeted by events, and before you know it, three years pass and it’s too late.”

Driscoll adds: “That’s exactly what’s happening.” It’s the “absence of government”, and the principle job of government is “to look after us”. He explains that Labour had £7million annually in short money in opposition to research good policies.

“He had four years – what’s he done with £28m? There’s no blueprint to deliver. We’ve nothing from this government saying ‘this is what we’re actually trying to fix’, other than ‘we want GDP to go up’.” He notes the last Labour government’s PFI model “mortgaged our futures and still has £160bn to pay off”. Even the NHS, with creeping privatisation, now faces “wealth extraction”.

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Child poverty infuriates Driscoll and he is angered by Starmer’s view that government is “about managing problems” rather than addressing their causes. Like Beveridge, “we need to redesign the system from scratch as there is no amount of tinkering going to fix things. But nobody in government believes that”.

He says Labour kept the Tory two-child cap “as they polled and found the ‘oh, you’re giving money to scroungers for having lots of kids’ argument played in a few key seats in middle England”. Driscoll knows a divorced microbiologist with four children who was better off unemployed due to the cap. “It’s a broken system.”

Trust is also broken. “How difficult,” Driscoll asks, “was it to say no to Coldplay tickets? What the hell was going on? Do you really trust their intentions?”

When it comes to “competence”, that’s damaged too as the government “has no plan. If you focus is on polling, on the constituencies you need to win in the Red Wall, then where’s your focus on policy?”.

Driscoll mocks the idea that Starmer was ever considered a “political genius”, citing his dreadful performance against Sunak in debates. Talk of creating “policy delivery units, separate from departments, is a recipe for gridlock”. At least, Driscoll says, Thatcher believed in a plan and stuck to it.

Driscoll “isn’t surprised” by the policy failure of the first 100 days. He recalls being at Labour headquarters last February “talking with the other mayors and shadow secretaries, running through policy ideas – and they didn’t have any. I was shocked by how little policy work had been done”.

He adds: “What I am surprised at is the political ineptitude, like the winter fuel allowance.” Not only is it bad policy, but no impact assessment was done, he says. “They just keep making silly mistakes. Everybody I speak to in politics says ‘I thought they’d be unpopular fairly quickly but didn’t think they’d be this unpopular this quickly’.”

Declining popularity “damages the government’s ability to get anything done”.

He also questions Reeves’s fiscal rules: “Why have a fiscal rule? There have been nine different sets of fiscal rules since the crash, not one was kept. Now they’re saying ‘that fiscal rule, we’re changing it’ – in which case, it wasn’t a rule.

“Fiscal rules aren’t for managing public finances, they’re for managing public opinion. They need to stop worrying about public opinion and govern. They’re not in opposition now, they’re in charge.”

The notion that the economy can’t grow if government borrows is “bollocks”. He says: “The national economy isn’t a household economy. All this ‘we’ve maxed out the credit card’ – the country doesn’t have credit cards. No-one is going to repossess Britain. Forget ideologies, look at the practical effects of policy.

“What we have is an unhealthy, under-skilled population with mental health problems and many in severe debt without the freedom to take risks on being entrepreneurs. The public realm is falling apart – you cannot fix that by taking more money out.”

More privatisation isn’t the answer. The rich buy national assets “then charge us rent for using it. Unless we fix that, we’re screwed”.

Starmer’s majority isn’t dependable, Driscoll believes, as Boris Johnson’s rise and fall shows. “Our political system is teetering, as the foundation it’s built on is collapsing.”

That leads Driscoll to “the interesting question of what comes next – we’ve seen far-right governments elected throughout Europe. The Labour Party is hollow and empty now”.

Indeed, Driscoll now considers Labour “centre-right, not centre-left”. Labour even fears to call rioters who “threw stones at mosques racists. If they tiptoe around instead of challenging, the narrative just slips further right”.

He adds: “History won’t judge Starmer well. It wouldn’t be hard to beat 14 years of Tory austerity, but he failed. Why doesn’t a party whose rule book still says it’s socialist want to do anything about poverty?

“We have now got a Labour government that has the Royal Mail in private ownership, which Thatcher never did, and the two-child benefit cap, which Thatcher never did. The antidote is people power.”

Increasing financial security reduces all other social problems – and their costs. The social and economic benefits of warmer homes, better quality food and good public transport are obvious, Driscoll points out.

“It’s about a generative, rather than extractive approach – creating national wealth. Wealth is skilled people doing useful things for other people, not how much money is hiding in Cayman island bank accounts.”

And what does the future hold for Starmer if he doesn’t change?

Driscoll adds: “Labour has no credibility in terms of vision, competence or integrity. The only electoral assets they have are the charm and charisma of Starmer and Reeves –which means they’re f****d.

“You’re going to have 200 backbench MPs looking over their shoulders thinking they’re out of a job at the next election.

“They won’t get rid of him in under three years, though, as they’d want him to take the fall.”