This government isn't dead yet
Keir Starmer, 2 July 2025 (Credit: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire)
5 min read
There was a period in 2008 when Gordon Brown was just about keeping level with David Cameron in the weekly scorecard for Prime Minister’s Questions time – he would announce a new policy that would catch the Tories flat-footed, land a killer stat or, more rarely, a killer joke. But even when Cameron lost, he was consistent in building his argument, and at the end of the term, it wasn’t the tactical weekly wins that mattered but the fact that Cameron had cemented his narrative: "Labour didn’t fix the roof when the sun was shining."
After a rotten first year, Labour MPs complain that Keir Starmer lacks a political strategy. They point to the effectiveness with which Cameron and George Osborne prosecuted their argument on ‘austerity’ and bemoan that their own chief prosecutor appears unable to do the same. Despite the fact that Morgan McSweeney miraculously delivered them 411 seats with just 33.7 per cent of the vote – a Tony Blair output on a Neil Kinnock input – there are mutterings that he is not good enough at political strategy.
Starmer and McSweeney will take a kicking for some time but anyone forecasting the death of this government is premature
But what do they want Starmer to say? There is no magic set of words that unlocks the constraints of high debt, huge spending commitments, and low growth. What do they want McSweeney to do? There is no secret way of splitting the electorate with a new intellectual argument. The public hardly listen: 46 per cent of Brits say they actively avoid news; among those that do consume news, 65 per cent do so by watching videos on a smartphone. The days when No 10 could consistently deliver an argument like Cameron did 16 years ago are long gone and not coming back. Instead there are only the huge challenges of government and the difficult task of navigating them.
Therefore Starmer’s logic is to focus on delivery – show, don’t tell. Two of the most effective and historically consequential actions that the Prime Minister executed in the last year – the re-emergence of the UK as the US’s chief ally, culminating in a trade deal, and the switch of funding from international aid to defence – were delivered without argument or outriders. They were just done. Starmer is insistent that there is no such thing as Starmerism. In place of ideology, he is pragmatic and these are the two proof points that validate Starmer’s belief that pragmatic delivery is the best political strategy in 2025.
When it works, that strategy works. But too often in the last year, it has not. And when it fails, it leaves a big hole.
On the welfare vote, Starmer has been pragmatic and tactical but in trying to avoid pissing off anyone, he has pissed off everyone. If there was a strategy for cutting the welfare budget, it failed spectacularly. The process has been a mess. The first case the government made for cutting Personal Independence Payment (PIP) was that it would get people back into work, but that did not last because PIP is not a work-related benefit; next, the government suggested that the problem was too many young people were self-diagnosing with mental health problems, but that fell down when it became the policy was not specifically targeting young people with mental health problems; then it became an issue about saving money – the bond markets, or at least the Treasury, had no choice – and then that narrative was withdrawn because it made it sound like the government was simply not in control. The result is the worst of all worlds: no cut has been made to the welfare budget and yet both the party and the public feel like Starmer was beating up on people with disabilities.
The handling of the winter fuel payment was another disaster. There is an argument to be won for doing what Labour have done on the winter fuel payment: the government stopped giving free money to the wealthiest pensioners and, in the process, also increased take up of pension credit and raised the Warm Homes Discount – which means money goes to children in poverty rather than millionaires in mansions. However, the policy was announced abruptly at the end of July, positioned as a decision over which the government had no choice – rather than owning it as an active choice – and left in a vacuum over summer, where it went completely undefended.
On both welfare and the winter fuel payment, Starmer was ultimately pragmatic in u-turning but in both cases the consistent arc of an argument was missing. Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ language, which he has subsequently regretted, is another example where it feels as if less tactical haste to respond to Reform and more depth of thought on his overall immigration strategy was needed. To have spent more time at the beginning interrogating why rather than what might have felt like time wasted on philosophy for the deeply pragmatic Starmer but it may have also resulted in a different path being drawn, with a strategic spine that allowed for tactical diversion without losing direction when obstacles were met. Starmer does not need to become as instinctively Machiavellian as Peter Mandelson but his advisers coaching him should subject him to articulate his purpose, not just his mission goals, even if only privately.
Starmer and McSweeney will take a kicking for some time but anyone forecasting the death of this government is premature. There are four years to run and the arc of delivery has begun: NHS reform is progressing at pace; there is growth in the economy; and the long-term changes are underway to housing, planning, energy, and industrial strategy. There is time for the arc of the argument to improve. It must.
Theo Bertram is director of Social Market Foundation
