LONDON – There was no summer honeymoon for Keir Starmer.
Britain’s new prime minister, elected in a landslide less than two months ago, had to cancel a planned vacation after anti-immigrant unrest erupted across the country. He has spent his first weeks in office dealing with the aftermath, and issuing stark warnings about the state of the nation and the economy.
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As lawmakers returned to Parliament on Monday after a shortened summer break, Starmer’s left-of-center Labour Party government was preparing for a budget statement next month that's likely to include tax rises or public spending cuts — or both.
The mood music is in stark contrast to the campaign song used by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the last Labour leader to win an election: “Things Can Only Get Better.”
“Frankly, things will get worse before they get better,” Starmer told voters in a televised speech last week.
Starmer is seeking to hammer home the message that the right-leaning Conservative Party, booted out by voters in the July 4 election, presided over “14 years of rot” that’s left Britain weakened economically, structurally and even morally.
During the election campaign, Starmer vowed to get the country’s sluggish economy growing and restore frayed public services such as the state-funded National Health Service.
Since winning power he’s said the situation is “worse than we ever imagined,” with an unexpected 22 billion pound ($29 billion) hole in the public finances. Labour has decided not to increase taxes on “working people,” but it has to find money somewhere. It has already scaled back a payment intended to help pensioners heat their homes in winter.
Starmer said last week that a budget statement coming on Oct. 30 will be “painful” and involve “short term pain for long term good.”
Conservative economy spokeswoman Laura Trott accused Starmer and his government of trying to “run from responsibility for the tax rises they always planned but hid from the public during the election.”
Paul Johnson, who heads economic think-tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has said Labour is being “disingenuous” when it claims to be surprised by the state of the finances, but that the Conservatives had “left Labour a mess to clear up.”
Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said Starmer’s government was going to “have to grasp the nettle” and confront the fact that two key pledges – improving public services and not raising any of the main taxes – “aren’t both achievable.”
Starmer faced a big test within weeks of taking office when anti-immigrant violence erupted after three children were stabbed to death in the town of Southport. The violence, fueled by online misinformation blaming a migrant and stirred up by far-right groups, spread across England and Northern Ireland over several days.
Starmer responded firmly, condemning a “mindless minority of thugs” fueled by the “snake-oil of populism” and pledging swift justice and tough sentences for rioters. But he says he was hobbled by past Conservative spending cuts that have left courts overstretched and prisons overcrowded.
Amid alarm from some Labour lawmakers about the gloomy messaging, the government is now trying to sound more positive. It notes that in his first weeks in office, Starmer scrapped the Conservatives’ stalled and controversial plan to send some asylum-seekers who arrive in the U.K. to Rwanda, struck deals with public-sector unions to end a wave of strikes and began to mend fences with the European Union after years of acrimony over Britain’s departure from the bloc.
The government is promising what it calls a “packed” parliamentary agenda to address some of voters’ main bugbears, including unreliable trains, sewage-dumping water companies and soaring rents. In the coming weeks it plans legislation to take public ownership of the railways, set up a state-owned green energy firm, impose tougher rules on water firms and strengthen workers’ rights.
“After 14 years of the Conservatives, we’ve had to act quickly and act drastically to stop the rot at the heart of our country’s finances, our public services and our politics,” House of Commons leader Lucy Powell said Sunday.
The opposition Conservatives have questioned Starmer's judgment and accused him of cronyism after several Labour backers were given civil service jobs. But the defeated party is occupied with a leadership contest to replace Rishi Sunak, which may give Starmer some breathing room.
Still, Ford said Starmer is taking “a big gamble on voters’ patience.”
“If you look at all the polling, it suggests people are very aware of the severity of the crisis, and I think that will buy them some time,” he said. “But I think any strategy that is built around disappointing voters and asking them for patience is inherently risky.”