During the election campaign, Keir Starmer confessed to taking Friday nights off. ‘I’ve been doing this for years – I will not do a work-related thing after six o’clock, pretty well come what may,’ he told a radio host. But one month into his premiership, and the Prime Minister is struggling even to take his pre-planned summer holiday.
Claims that Labour’s decisive victory would make the UK a pocket of stability in a polarised world now look hubristic. Starmer leads a country that others such as Australia and Malaysia are warning their citizens not to travel to. Meanwhile he is engulfed in a very public Twitter spat with tech billionaire Elon Musk. As if in response to No. 10’s concerns about the role of social media in fuelling the disorder, Musk has shared some of the most incendiary videos to his 193 million followers and declared civil war in the UK to be ‘inevitable’. It’s a far cry from Rishi Sunak’s decision to host Musk for a cosy fireside chat at the government’s AI summit last year.
After just a month in power, Starmer is facing his first crisis – but it is one he ought to be well prepared for. During the 2011 London riots he was director of public prosecutors and aided a ‘lock them up’ strategy to administer swift and tough justice to deter other disturbances. He has done the same this time, promising 500 more prison places and late-night court sittings. But the disorder is showing little signs of dissipating. The public seem unimpressed. A YouGov poll found that Britons tend to think Starmer is handling the riots badly and his personal approval ratings have plummeted.
‘I don’t think we could call this a honeymoon,’ says a Labour aide, wryly. The political bounce Starmer enjoyed straight after the election has given way to problems: overcrowded jails, tax rises planned for autumn and a general sense of lawlessness. It’s the last that could be the most difficult to overcome as Labour politicians fight off allegations of ‘two-tier policing’. Even Musk has taken to calling the PM ‘two-tier Keir’.
Matters haven’t exactly been helped by Jess Phillips, now a Home Office minister, who appeared to make excuses on social media for a group of masked Gaza protestors who made gun gestures behind a Sky News reporter (she almost lost her seat to a pro-Palestine candidate). ‘Think before you tweet,’ says a colleague. The next day, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood attempted to set the record straight: ‘It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re protesting – if you turn up in a mask, with a weapon, intent on causing disorder, you will face the full force of the law.’ That this even has to be said is telling.
The interplay between tech and the riots is, meanwhile, occupying ministerial minds. The hack-proof Telegram is now viewed in the Home Office as the problem. A new unit in the Department for Science and Technology is flagging posts that civil servants feel fall foul of social media guidelines. For now, there is an effort to work with tech companies rather than against them – but this could change if there is a lack of progress. The Online Safety Act does not come into effect in full until next year, but already one minister has gone public to say it won’t go far enough. ‘Get ready for an authoritarian push,’ complains a Tory backbencher.
Claims that Labour’s decisive victory would make the UK a pocket of stability now look hubristic
These protests fit into a wider challenge Starmer has set himself. Since entering No. 10, Starmer has spoken several times about the need for centrism and to challenge the hard right – but he now finds himself facing accusations that, in his haste to do so, he’s conflating genuine concerns with extremism. The UK has so far been largely immune to the rise of far-right parties seen elsewhere in Europe, but the view in Downing Street is that this can only remain the case by making sure people feel as though their lives are improving under Labour.
The danger for Starmer is that the next few months prove bumpy – and goodwill towards the new government is being quickly used up. He faces a backlash among some pensioners angry at the loss of the winter fuel allowance. But more important is the question of whether he is in a position to bring the country together. After winning a smaller vote share than any modern prime minister, he had hoped to keep widening his coalition – but he has immediately faced accusations of being too quick to dismiss as bigotry any concerns about demographic change.
The London riots were over quickly. The risk is that the violence, which started in response to the Southport atrocity, will keep growing as a wider anti-migrant protest. The attacks were centred around hotels housing migrants. Notably, Labour is keen to crack down on the use of hotels for this purpose, but will instead look to private landlords for help – which is likely to add to the strain on the existing rental market.
Labour has scrapped the Rwanda scheme and closed down the Bibby Stockholm barge, which the Tories had leased to house migrants. But the government hasn’t devised anything to replace it. A proposed border unit, set up to deal with small boat crossings in the Channel, advertised for a new chief last month. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage is ready to capitalise on the problems with warnings about a summer of record arrivals. The end of the Rwanda scheme has coincided with high numbers of migrants crossing – as many as 1,500 in a week – although this isn’t surprising in the summer months.
The Tories are watching this with mixed feelings. There are things to attack Starmer for – and hints of trouble ahead. But it’s not clear they are in a position to capitalise on his weaknesses. The party has opted for such a long leadership contest that it’s not clear who should be the one fronting the attacks. Sunak is on holiday – so it’s fallen to the six leadership candidates to try to land blows on the government, but in the middle of a contest it looks like opportunistic positioning.
Starmer still has a few weeks before the return of parliament, so he can act without the interference of MPs. There are months left to go before he will face an official leader of the opposition. But a failure to restore order to the streets would be an immediate indicator that he has failed his first big test.
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