Voters asked the main achievements of Starmer’s first year, answer: ‘Nothing’

It’s a year since Keir Starmer and Labour were elected to govern the UK. Much of what was said at the time now has a hollow, even laughable ring, whether it be Starmer’s own statement in Downing Street that he would lead a “government of service” which would “tread more lightly on your lives”, or the view of Andrew Marr, one of Britain’s top political commentators, that “for the first time in many of our lives Britain looks like a haven of peace and stability”. More disturbingly, Caitlin Moran, a top Times writer, wrote that “Starmer has turbo-charged my arousal levels. I feel fruity.”

One moves on with a shudder and notes what is now obvious to all, that Starmer himself had no real governing philosophy. He won a freak election victory on a third of the vote, but no real consent to do anything much economically or politically. So once voters started to read what sort of man he really was – which they did in August last year as he cracked down on free expression while at the same time taking free gifts from millionaires – he suffered a crisis of confidence from which he has not recovered and is very unlikely to.

A pollster this weekend asked voters what they considered the main achievements of Starmer’s first year. The resultant word cloud contained one giant word – “Nothing”. In truth, Labour seem to have genuinely believed that all they had to do was replace the Conservatives, and all would be well again. That’s why they have made such a mess.

Economic management has been disastrously bad. The first Labour budget, in autumn last year, achieved the impressive double act of pushing up taxes by nearly 2 per cent of GDP and yet worsening the deficit by increasing spending even more. Finance Minister Rachel Reeves reassured companies that she wouldn’t do it again. But this week she was in tears in the House of Commons as Labour’s plans to cut increases in welfare spending collapsed under left-wing pressure, and the government is now briefing it has no alternative but to come back for more.

The government says it wants more growth to help solve the public finance problem. But almost every measure it brings forward – a massive re-regulation of the labour market, new controls on the property rental market, the destruction of the improved British school system that pushed the country to near the top of the Pisa rankings, a crackdown on rich foreigners – makes the problem worse not better. It is as if they believe that growth is some magic ingredient, some invisible element like phlogiston or ether, not something  within human power to generate with sensible economic policy.

Labour also  have no idea how to solve the problem of illegal immigration. They dismantled the Rwanda offshoring plans so painfully constructed by their predecessors, and therefore have no deterrent to the endless flow of small boats coming across the Channel. They have taken credit for the Conservatives’ belated crackdown on legal immigration, only now showing up in the figures; but with half a million people net still coming to Britain every year they haven’t got anywhere near dealing with the British economy’s dependence on the sugar rush of low-paid low-skill migration, let alone its cultural effect on the country.

In foreign affairs they have scarcely been better. Starmer seems to have managed the relationship with Trump better than many expected, though that may be more due to Trump’s affection for Britain and the Royal Family than his own skills. Pausing briefly to hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory, with its military base, to Mauritius and paying for the privilege, they have begun the process of piloting Britain back into the EU’s orbit, of accepting EU policies without any say in them. Responsibility without power, normally the role of the local administrators of a defeated and occupied power, seems to be Labour’s actual policy goal.

“Things can only get better” was the theme tune of Tony Blair, Starmer’s Labour predecessor. Not now. As the British people contemplate their becalmed government this weekend, most feel down about the future. They can see that the collapse last week of even a feeble attempt to cut welfare spending leaves Labour unable to carry out any policy that does not tilt left. Hence the widespread expectation of further tax rises, maybe even a wealth tax for the first time ever in Britain, and an intensification of the current mad and costly dash to net zero under eco-nutter Ed Miliband. Labour may have a massive majority, the theoretical ability to do anything they want. In real life they can only use it to do things which will make all the country’s problems worse. No wonder everyone is so gloomy and depressed.

There is an unnerving similarity in all this with the problems of France and Germany.  French President Emmanuel Macron will by coincidence be coming to Britain this week for a State visit. All the usual pageantry will be wheeled out, tea with the King at Windsor, flags down the Mall to Buckingham Palace, a speech in Parliament. But it won’t hide the fact that neither Macron nor Starmer can govern in a way that solves their countries’ problems. Both were elected more because people didn’t like the alternative than for any qualities they themselves have. And neither can implement the policies they were elected upon – insofar as one can tell what they were.

Later this month too Britain will sign a new bilateral treaty with Germany. When they meet, Starmer and Chancellor Friedrich Merz will have much to wring their hands about together, for Merz would probably agree with Starmer on most things, despite their different political affiliations. But Merz too is trapped by politics, unable to deliver the policies he stood on and now committed, whether against his will or not who knows, to a further leftward tilt.

All this is bad news for Europe. What Europe needs is massive deregulation and market-based reform, and a crackdown on immigration.  It isn’t going to get any of these things under Macron, Merz, and von der Leyen. Britain won’t under Starmer either. Meanwhile the anger and pressure builds up. The only question is who first gets blown away by events.

A few weeks back, Starmer, uncharacteristically grasping the popular mood on immigration, described Britain as an “island of strangers”. Much more characteristically, last week he told the media he wished he had not said it. Indeed, a famous line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest might have more effectively  conveyed what appear to be his real feelings, that the British people must just put up with things: “Be not afear’d: the island is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.” Unfortunately, the island is indeed full of noises, but they are far from sweet, and the British people are very afear’d. One day, the first chance they get, but not soon enough, they will sweep Starmer aside.

The Rt Hon Lord Frost of Allenton CMG was Britain’s chief negotiator for exiting the European Union.