500 Days of Starmer

A polite request: No debating Tom vs. Summer in the comments

Image: (c) Fox Searchlight Pictures. Used under Fair Dealing for the purpose of parody and pastiche.

I vividly recall watching the Autumn 2024 Budget, Labour’s first. I was a placement student working in London at the time, ready to spend his newly earned dough on some tipple. 

That’s when it happened, when Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, who presented the first Labour Budget in 14 years said:

Image credit: (c) Marvel Studios / Walt Disney Studios. From Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023). Used under Fair Dealing for the purpose of parody and satire.

The Marquis of Granby definitely made the most of that 1p reduction. In reality, the announcement was probably just a handy excuse for the drinking that was going to happen regardless. Still, I do remember a real sense of hope arriving with the new Labour government with their promises of higher growth, planning reform, and “ironclad” fiscal credibility. 

But this hope was short-lived. Like many, including myself, we made the old mistake of falling for the idea of someone and not for who they actually were. 500 days later (or 540 at the time of publishing to be precise), most of us have now realised the reality of the situation we’re in.

While we did finally get the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 passed just a few days ago, the promised shovels in the ground still feel stuck in a bog of consultations and grey belt definitions. 

That high growth mission looks more like a 1.5% flash in the pan that has already started to fizzle, leaving us with a productivity forecast that the OBR just slashed to a dismal 1%.

As for that 'ironclad' fiscal credibility? The bond markets clearly didn’t get the memo; with 10-year gilt yields spiking to 4.5% and borrowing overshooting every target, it feels less like an ironclad shield and more like a fiscal straitjacket that’s starting to pinch.

Looking back, perhaps we were more guilty of wishful thinking than we cared to admit. We should have seen the warning signs: a history of political U-turns should have signalled the inevitable backlash when Labour pivoted to slashing benefits, and anyone tracking the size of the national debt could have told you that Labour would have struggled to grow spending and the economy. 

But the real sting came from the shift in rhetoric. After a campaign fueled by the infectious promise of ‘Change,’ the government suddenly swapped its optimism for a grim litany of 'black holes' and national decline. By spending their first months talking down the country rather than lifting it up, they didn't just manage expectations, they smothered the very hope they had spent years cultivating.

Then comes the irony: while we were once guilty of wishful thinking about him, Starmer now seems to be doing the same regarding himself. He operates with the swagger of a man who won a historic mandate, ignoring the fact that his landslide was built on the shakiest of foundations - a record-low 59.7% turnout and the lowest vote share for a majority government in recent history. He treats this as a blank check, often dismissing the public's growing unease.

This disconnect is most visible at the dispatch box. In recent clashes with Kemi Badenoch, who has skewered him for losing control of everything from the economy to his party, Starmer doesn't offer solutions; he simply deflects. Nowhere is this more apparent than on migration.

By introducing performative hurdles like the ten-year wait for settlement, he has managed a rare political feat: alienating the pro-immigration wing of his own party who see the policies as needlessly cruel, while simultaneously failing the pro-reform voters who see a government that talks about control but refuses to enact the structural changes needed to actually deliver it.

In this sense, Starmer has become the political equivalent of Tom. He is the protagonist of a story only he is telling, ignoring every red flag and every signal from the electorate that the relationship isn't working until the very last moment. He gazes at a version of Britain that doesn't exist, and he must realise this should he wish to survive the next general election.