Rose Judson

Out of the gate, things looked promising. There were some good (and even potentially great) appointments to the cabinet and to other posts in government. Following this summer’s racist riots, courts moved swiftly to try and sentence criminals, in spite of the years of underfunding that have left the U.K.’s criminal justice system in dire straits. Some long-running labo(u)r disputes were swiftly solved within days of the new government getting in.

But then came the gloom: Starmer gave a very dour speech about how the new government had discovered a previously undisclosed £22 billion “black hole” in the nation’s finances. And Sir Keir’s proposal for closing this hole? Cutting the winter fuel payment given to some of the nation’s wealthier pensioners. Pensioners! I don’t care what country you’re in: you do not fuck with old people’s money! At last week’s Labour conference, the trade unions registered their anger at the proposed cut with a non-binding vote demanding a U-turn from the government.

There was also petty infighting: apparently, upon entering the government, Starmer gave his chief adviser Sue Gray a modest raise in pay. This put her salary up to £170,000 per year (about $228,000 USD), or just over £3,000 more than Starmer earns himself. For whatever reason (it’s misogyny, that’s the reason), this became a massive “scandal.” To be fair, it is a little weird that this adviser earns more than the PM, but a large part of the reason this story seems to have taken off in the media is because the tip came from disgruntled leakers within Labour. Leaks, the journalist’s catnip! Could Starmer hold his own party together? the political reporters wondered. Was he already losing the plot?! 

Finally, there’s the freebies. At the start of this month, some journalist at one of the big papers finally got through his back issues of the venerable satire/muckraking news magazine Private Eye, and noticed that, for several months, they’d been reporting about some eye-opening line items in Sir Keir’s expense disclosures. Turns out that since ascending to the head of the party in 2019, Starmer had accepted and disclosed more than £100,000 in gifts, hospitality, and other goodies, including clothing for his wife and lots of tickets to see Starmer’s favourite club, Arsenal F.C. This all seemed deeply hypocritical, even if it was legal and a matter of public record.

Starmer’s pitch to the nation was a different, above-board way of doing things. A government that owed nobody any favours. And, to be fair, it does seem that he did everything in line with current legislation and that nobody who gifted him anything received special consideration as a result. (Compare this to Boris Johnson, who relied on a party donor to pay for his expensive renovation of the PM’s residence, and then failed to declare that.)

Still, Starmer had to know. He had to know that this was a big stack of cut grass, and that the press would have their pitchforks ready for the hay-making. I’m just another immigrant living in Birmingham, but even I understand that the U.K. media is even more vicious toward left-wing politicians than its U.S. counterpart. I knew it wouldn’t give Starmer any grace as he settled into office. And I knew that it would seize eagerly on the first possible weapon, and here we are.

Then, to top it all off, while delivering his keynote speech at the party conference last week, Sir Keir flubbed a line in the section of his speech addressing Israel and Palestine. Instead of calling for the “return of the hostages”, he said “return of the sausages.”

No, really. Watch:

It was hoped, in spite of everything, that Labour’s victory would be a new dawn for British politics. Instead it seems we’re all stuck inside the PM’s back-to-school anxiety dream, the one where you realize, while standing in front of the class, that you have no trousers on. They need to snap out of it: if Labour fails to deliver, lying in wait are not just the Tories, but far-right Reform, led by the odious fascist grifter Nigel Farage. Having them in power, even in coalition, would be a legitimate nightmare.

How does Labour get on a sounder footing? It’s hard to see a path. Starmer’s polls are in the toilet; he is currently less popular than Rishi Sunak was at the time of the election. It’s possible the publication of the budget on October 30th could restore some goodwill. That at least is what some of the journalists I trust seem to think:

Once the budget lands, Labour needs to flood the zone with successful policies. Right now there’s a vacuum and the Tories are filling it by pumping out these stories.

— Mark Chadbourn (@chadbourn.bsky.social) September 28, 2024 at 9:44 PM

However, Labour has ruled out borrowing to invest, in spite of the bind we’re in. More likely is that the Tory leadership fight turns uglier and therefore newsier, allowing the legal-but-icky largesse showered upon MPs to recede into the distance. (It helps that revisions to the rules are being hastily proposed.)

Either way, with a fixed five-year term stretching ahead of us, many here are trying to believe that things can only get better. It ain’t half hard, though.