Keir Starmer's first year: The government is struggling but far from doomed, writes Andrew Marr

4 July 2025, 11:34

By Andrew Marr

@AndrewMarr9

One year on, and they are a puzzle, Keir Starmer and his government.

The Prime Minister has done well abroad – forging a good relationship with Donald Trump, against all the odds, doing trade deals with the US, EU and India, sticking solidly alongside Ukraine and building support for that embattled country.

We often discount this, and Starmer is mocked in Westminster as “never here Keir”; but consider how much time he spent trying to de-escalate the Israel-Iran conflict to avoid Britain being drawn in, with our bases at Cyprus and elsewhere.

In a parallel world where this war got out of control, and the oil price hugely spiked, we would be in a position today of utter disaster… But it didn’t happen, so we don’t talk about it.

At home, of course, it’s a very different picture.

Even if the cause was purely personal, the spectacle of a sobbing Chancellor in the Commons the day after the welfare cuts were stopped in the track by angry Labour MPs will go down as the defining image of the government, one year on.

It isn’t enough to blame Rachel Reeves for what’s gone wrong, although the winter fuel payment cut was an early and definitive mistake.

She has been brutally constrained by the bond markets, in a generally suspicious mood ever since the Liz Truss experiment.

A “normal” Labour government would be borrowing more by now, to repair day-to-day spending, not just for infrastructure: she cannot.

But she and Starmer do you share the blame for the extreme promises they made on taxation during the election campaign last summer they won so well.

By refusing to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance for individuals, and capping corporation tax throughout the Parliament, she gave herself almost no wriggle room.

Unfortunately, they inherited and almost catastrophic situation in public services which – again – a “normal” Labour government would have tried to tackle early and aggressively.

The result is that voters have seen very little improvements anywhere so far, while the government has turned to smaller measures to plug gaps – the inheritance tax attack on farmers, the proposed welfare cuts, VAT on private school fees.

Each of these provoked a localised but very angry campaign of protest and added to our government which seemed, frankly confusing as to its core values.

When the government was elected I optimistically hoped for a wall of private investment – which has largely materialised – and thought that a period of calm, ordered government after the years of Tory chaos was just what the country needed.

In journalism, you are always praised for catastrophism and look foolish when you are optimistic. This is still a government of fundamentally decent people in public service for the right reasons.

But its political failures have been a shock: the freebies and taking money for clothing early on, the winter fuel allowance, the too-slow response to the grooming gang scandal, the chaotic retreat over welfare reform, the impact on employment of the NIC increase… I could go on.

Plenty of people are already saying this is a doomed government and a doomed prime minister, a man so far behind in the polls it’s impossible to climb back.

I don’t agree. If the polls were reflected in an election today, Nigel Farage would be prime minister. But there are four years to go, and nothing in politics or life is inevitable.

Labour’s medium and long-term investment, in defence industries, nuclear and alternative energy, roads and rail, the lives of less well-off school children, and the NHS, where waiting lists are already falling noticeably… all these things will all make a real difference in time, and voters will see them. This is a long game.

What really matters is whether normal voters feel more money in their pockets by the end of this Parliament.

Yes, that depends on a few things in the governments gift, like the minimum wage. But it is mostly about economic growth.

Here, whatever is going on abroad, Starmer and Reeves need to re-double their efforts. It would be far better to raise income taxes, however politically painful, on the better off, then to continue to burden the businesses we need to grow.

The Prime Minister must spend more time laser focused on the domestic agenda, must be much more attentive to the views of his talented and well-informed backbenchers, and needs to find clear, rousing language about his purpose (which is, he would say, simply to make life a bit better for ordinary people).

Somehow, he needs to stem the numbers of illegal migrants and send failed asylum seekers back in larger numbers; he needs to get more police actually on the street so that we notice them; he needs to learn to connect emotionally with voters.

The price of failure would be very high. This government is not simply in a fight with conventional political opponents, either the Tories or Reform.

Across the country there is a deep sense of disillusion with liberal democracy itself. When Nigel Farage says, after me something much worse, something much darker maybe coming, he is quite right.

So I would say, one year on, dial down the glee, and start rooting for the decent people to do better.

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