A rough start with worse to come

Keir Starmer’s Labour government took office a year ago following an overwhelming election victory that consigned an unpopular Conservative government to history. I did, however, warn that Labour’s victory owed less to its own popularity and more to the electorate’s desire for change. As I noted at the time: “This makes it all the more imperative that Starmer’s government gets the big things right quickly. Making voters lives better is the one thing that will raise the chances of a second term in office – a second term that will undoubtedly be required to properly fix many of the things in the economy that require improvement.”

Fiscal challenges and policy U-turns

Measured against this yardstick, the government is failing to meet its objectives and there is common agreement that it does not have a clearly defined philosophy. Economic policy has largely been focused on tackling the UK’s mounting fiscal burden. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, claimed in summer 2024 that the situation was worse than Labour imagined before taking office, though as the Institute for Government has noted: “the truth is that most of the tough fiscal choices that this government faced were well known before the election – politicians from both main parties simply chose to ignore them.” Reeves claimed that unfunded spending commitments made by the previous Conservative government resulted in a £22bn “black hole” in public finances (around 0.8% of GDP). While it is true that a Treasury audit pointed to a departmental overspend in fiscal year 2024-25 of £21.9bn, almost half of this arose from the current government’s discretionary decision to accept recommendations for public sector pay awards which were higher than those factored in by the Tories. Nor has the £22bn figure been endorsed by the OBR, which suggested that the previous government’s unannounced policy commitments were worth around £9.5bn.

Hemmed in by its manifesto commitment not to raise taxes on “working people”, the Chancellor was forced to find some measures to show the government’s commitment to fiscal rectitude. But the proposals put forward by Reeves have been poorly presented, with the result that the government has backtracked on policy announcements in the face of opposition. A case in point was the plan to limit the Winter Fuel Allowance to only the poorest pensioners. The payment was originally introduced in 1997 as a universal benefit but the incoming Labour government surprisingly announced in 2024 that it would be converted to a means-tested benefit. This generated a huge wave of criticism and was cited as one of the reasons why Labour performed so poorly in the May local elections and prompted a policy U-turn shortly afterwards. 

For all the political capital which was squandered by the policy, it was only expected to save £1.4bn of fiscal outlays, and the policy reversal, which raises the income threshold for the benefit, will now only save around £0.45bn – a trivial amount in UK fiscal terms (see chart above). Indeed, fiscal data for the first ten months of Labour’s tenure show that borrowing has risen by £33bn (around 1.1% of GDP) versus the corresponding period a year earlier.

Similarly, the government was forced this week to significantly water down its planned reform of the welfare system in the face of fierce opposition from backbench Labour MPs. Here, too, the fiscal savings resulting from tightening access to welfare payments are relatively small in the grand scheme of things, with an estimated saving of £5.5bn by fiscal 2029-30. As was the case with the Winter Fuel Allowance, a huge amount of political capital was risked to achieve a small monetary saving. This has raised questions about the government’s political acumen and has increasingly called the prime minister’s authority into question. While this is the normal response of a commentariat which likes nothing better than to poke holes in the shortcomings of the government of the day, it is increasingly clear that Starmer’s administration has failed to regenerate the feelgood factor. To the extent that the government is going to need a second term to address the deep-seated economic problems facing the economy, the fact that Labour now trails Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in the polls should act as an urgent wakeup call (see chart below).

Hard to see how taxes cannot rise

Matters might well get worse before they get better. Indeed, there is increasing speculation that the government will be forced to raise taxes in the autumn, despite the manifesto commitment not to do so. The howls of protest from opposition political parties, and perhaps even from backbench Labour MPs, will be predictably loud, but in truth the government is out of fiscal options and has very little headroom to ensure that its fiscal rules can be met over the course of this parliament. Public services are stretched and the electorate has noticed. The NHS remains under huge pressure, and although there has been a small decline in waiting lists for treatment in the past 12 months, public dissatisfaction with the NHS continues to hit new highs (see chart below). Nor has the abolition of NHS England gone down well with medical professionals. The prime minister sold it as a way of increasing efficiency by reducing the degree of centralisation: Insiders see it as a way to cut NHS jobs. Equally importantly, the criminal justice system is operating with no spare capacity, to the point at which the government even experimented with the early release of prisoners to alleviate the strain – a policy which is unpopular with the public.

And then there is defence spending. The government plans to raise it to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 (2024: 2.3%) and has ambitions to increase it to 3% in the next parliament. NATO is seeking agreement from members to raise it to 5% by 2035, comprised of 3.5% under the current core definition with a supplementary 1.5% allocated to critical infrastructure protection. The uplift in 2027 will be financed by a reduction in the overseas aid budget but it is hard to conceive that any further increase can be achieved without raising taxes. A near-doubling of defence spending, to 5% of GDP, would take it to its highest level since the mid-1950s (see chart below). Faced with an ageing population which will stretch the NHS budget, and a sluggish productivity performance which continues to hold back growth, this government – and the next one – will have to make some very hard choices about how to spend their increasingly limited fiscal resources.

The government needs to improve its performance – and fast

Whether Starmer will be the prime minister beyond the next election remains to be seen. He has defied the doubters before, and is not someone who should be underestimated, but his personal popularity ratings are not high. In the wake of the recent policy U-turns, his net approval rating has dropped to -43% with mounting concern that he has responded to the electoral tactics of Reform UK rather than set the agenda on his terms. Starmer’s government has endured a rocky start and needs to outline an agenda which voters can buy into. Failure to do so in the second year of this government will merely raise the risk that Nigel Farage and his band of upstarts could come close to getting their hands on the levers of power in 2029.

As was the case with Labour’s big win in 2024, voters do not have to buy into Reform UK’s policies to reward them at the ballot box. They just need to believe that the status quo is failing, and that it is time to try something different. It may be four years until the next election, and the electorate may eventually forgive Labour for their rocky start, but Starmer and his team cannot afford another year like the last one if they are to win a second term.