The phrase “first 100 days” in British politics is most associated with the 1997 Labour government. As part of a wider media strategy, the Blair administration laid out a program of deliverable reform to be started immediately upon entering office, so that on their 100th day, Blair and several of his key ministers would each make statements listing their achievements thus far. The theatre was successful enough for the New Labour activist Derek Draper to publish a popular insider account detailing the events.
It's doubtful Keir Starmer wants the first 100 days of his government to be remembered. I was far more cynical about the prospects of the new Labour government than most people I know. I remember irritating relatives before the general election by saying there was very little at stake as both major parties had almost identical programmes of managed decline, austerity plus crackdowns. Their lockstep alignment with the Conservatives over Palestine throughout Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza was the canary in the coalmine for what kind of government they’d be. But even I didn’t think Labour’s support would plummet so quickly after entering office.
Starmer’s personal ratings are the lowest of any PM on record after their 100 days, as shown in the latest YouGov poll. This is an unparalleled collapse in public opinion, that is with the exception of Liz Truss.
But it’s far more than just public perception. If we ever get an inside account on Starmer’s first 100 days, the focus is unlikely to be delivering manifesto pledges, but rather on how the government seemed to almost immediately descend into very public infighting upon taking office.
Within 3 weeks Starmer removed the whip from 7 Labour MPs for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, a policy that was described as “vicious… heinous… absolutely keeping children in poverty” by his close ally Jonathan Ashworth. Most of the media reacted like this was just normal party discipline, but the reality is removing the whip for merely voting against the party line on a policy not even in the manifesto is a drastic escalation in draconian control over MPs.
It was a sign of weakness that Starmer apparently cannot bear any dissenting voices within the Parliamentary Party.
Even more serious for the PM though, is that he’s now lost his chief of staff Sue Gray. Whether she was fired or voluntarily resigned is not yet clear, but the substance of it is she was hounded by an internal sabotage campaign almost immediately upon entering government. Not a week went by without someone briefing to the media a new story that reflected badly on her.
Whether the stories were true is immaterial at the moment, as there are only two explanations. Either they were true, which means Starmer showed appalling judgement in appointing someone so wholly unsuitable to be Downing Street Chief of Staff that they had to be replaced 3 months later, or they were false, which means Starmer has been forced into hiring a Chief of Staff he doesn’t want by a campaign of lies coming from within his own office. Whichever was the reason, his authority as leader has been severely damaged.
These antics resemble a government on its last legs, not one that’s barely got started.
Starmer’s new Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, was fined last November by the Electoral Commission for failing to declare around £730,000 in donations from millionaire venture capitalists and businessmen to his Labour Together think tank. He more recently made the news in a new book by former Guardian political editor Anushka Asthana, which details how Labour Together was in fact set up to “win Labour back from the left.” Most interestingly, McSweeney is quoted as saying that one of the biggest threats ‘the group might encounter was “a Labour government”’, making it explicit that their objection to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was not whether he could win an election, but rather him doing so would hinder their efforts to take control of the party.
The fall of Sue Gray should be understood as the defenestration of a relatively non-factional member of the British establishment, with an unscrupulous operator of the Labour right specifically.
Concurrent to Labour’s internal turmoil has been their harsh treatment by the press. One of the most revealing events of the last Conservative government was “The Great Noticing” of late-2021, i.e. when the British news media, with remarkable co-ordination and discipline, all started simply relentlessly reporting on the corrupt and scandalous things senior Conservatives were up to.
You didn’t need think too hard to realise that the press clearly knew about all these things long before The Great Noticing, for example the ‘Partygate’ scandal centred on events that’d happened over a year ago, with journalists being fully aware at the time. So rather than just news reporting, what was really happening was the British establishment, through its media mouthpieces, deciding that the Conservative Party’s time in office was up.
In the interest of fairness, perhaps you’d think that Labour would be permitted around 10 years in government before the media turned on them, but unfortunately for them, the press seem to be going for their throats almost from the start. Starmer and his ministers being seemingly addicted to accepting “gifts” and “freebies” from superrich businessmen of course makes them very easy targets, but also reveals that they probably didn’t think the press would turn on them so quickly.
At this point, it looks like Starmer’s Labour has already performed its service to the British establishment, so they feel no obligation to prop them up any further. Their utility now is to be blamed for the destruction they unleash upon the country as they implement austerity that goes far beyond that of the last Conservative government. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party (and perhaps Nigel Farage) will have the next few years to present themselves as the alternative, promising that what the country needs to fix Labour’s mess is yet another radical right-wing revolution.
Daniel Lindley is a trade union activist in the UK.
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