Starmer enjoys ‘honeymoon’ start as UK PM

LONDON – Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer could hardly have asked for a better first week as prime minister, from hobnobbing with fellow world leaders to England’s run to the final of the European football championships.

But a rebellion brewing within his ruling Labour party over child welfare payments and a prison overcrowding crisis forcing the early release of offenders means the honeymoon is unlikely to last.

He hit the ground running upon entering Downing Street on July 5 as

Labour returned to power after 14 years

following a landslide general election victory over Mr Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives.

In his first few days, Mr Starmer made bold ministerial appointments, held a press conference at his official residence and delivered his first speech in Parliament as Premier.

He then jetted off to Washington for a fortuitously timed Nato summit where he was able to burnish his statesman credentials alongside US President Joe Biden and other world leaders.

“He has wanted to do this for so long. Just getting on with it is a release and a relief for him,” Mr Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin told the foreign media in London on July 11.

Reset

In Washington, Mr Starmer declared he was “determined to renew Britain’s place on the world stage”, noting “there was a sense after Brexit that the UK had become too inward-looking”.

He pledged to “reset” Britain’s relationship with Europe and reaffirmed UK support for Ukraine during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mr Starmer also backed the cognitive abilities of the embattled Biden, who treated his British counterpart to golden photo opportunities in the Oval Office and on the White House balcony.

“Sitting next to Biden in the White House, he doesn’t look like an unequal,” said Mr Baldwin.

Mr Starmer’s three-day trip to the US capital coincided with England’s dramatic late win against the Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final on July 10.

The football-crazy Starmer, who presented Mr Biden with a shirt of his favourite team Arsenal, said the UK would “certainly mark the occasion” if England wins July 14’s final in Berlin – a match he is due to attend.

Victory over Spain would most likely see Mr Starmer welcome the England team to Downing Street, continuing the feel-good factor in the UK’s largest country – although not so much in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

An Ipsos poll published on July 12 suggested Mr Starmer is enjoying a bounce in popularity, as Britain largely breathes a sigh of relief at the end of a tumultuous period of Tory rule.

The survey, carried out on July 5 and 6, found that 40 per cent of voters had a favourable view of the new UK leader, up six points from the final week of the campaign.

“These findings suggest something of a honeymoon period for Keir Starmer, with... Britons more likely to expect his government to change things for the better than worse,” said Ipsos director of politics Keiran Pedley.

Dire inheritance

Labour’s priority is economic growth, and it quickly launched a National Wealth Fund to boost private investment and ended the Tories’ ban on new onshore wind farms.

Mr Starmer was praised for appointing ministers from outside, notably Covid-19-era adviser Patrick Vallance as science minister and international law expert Richard Hermer as attorney-general.

He was also hailed for naming justice reform advocate James Timpson as prisons minister.

“The new government has clearly made a strong start,” Mr Patrick Diamond, a former Downing Street policy adviser, told AFP.

Much of that start has also focused on blaming the Tories for a dire inheritance. Mr Starmer’s government has commissioned a probe into public finances and a “broken” state-run National Health Service.

The government announced on July 12 that thousands of prisoners will be released early from near-capacity jails, with Mr Starmer – a former chief public prosecutor – blaming the “complete failure” of the Conservatives for the situation.

King Charles III, who is the head of state, will outline his government’s legislative proposals at the state opening of Parliament on July 17, before Mr Starmer plays host to a summit of European leaders at Blenheim Palace on Thursday.

Mr Starmer is expected to resist pressure from some of his own MPs to remove a controversial two-child benefit cap.

“The new government needs to be careful that its public narrative is not too gloomy,” warned Mr Diamond.

“If all the talk is of failure there is a risk that the hope and optimism engendered by the election result dissipates.” AFP