For Starmer, things can only get worse
It’s been a bad year for Starmer, characterised by scandals, economic woes and plummeting poll ratings – and it looks 2026 is going to be no better, says Tom Harwood
As we all enjoy late December’s time honoured if questionable traditions of frantic Christmas shopping, parties and hangovers – please spare a thought for one man who is most certainly not having a Happy Chritstmas.
It was supposed to be all so different for Sir Keir Starmer. Just 16 months ago he was a man on top of the world. Cruising to victory of a scale not seen since the electoral magic of Tony Blair.
A decade of national renewal, our new Prime Minister declared. His decade.
And yet the first few months were difficult. More difficult than almost anyone expected. No freshly elected government has fallen in the estimation of the country quite so quickly in recorded history. Scandals continually hit over a budget that raised taxes by £40bn, an arguable manifesto breach over national insurance, government borrowing rising by tens of billions of pounds, accompanied by the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from millions of pensioners.
And that’s before we even mention the grubby freebies. Lord Ali funding the lifestyle of the entire Cabinet. Glasses for passes. Tickets to everything from football to Taylor Swift. Let alone the deluge of politically appointed civil servants, the resignation of a Cabinet minister over fraud, and the dramatic departure of Downing Street chief of staff Sue Gray.
It’s hard to think of a worse start this government could have got off to. But at least the Prime Minister went into Christmas last year thinking one thing. The worst was behind him.
Through Christmas 2024, despite the deluge of scandal and general cack-handedness, remarkably, the Labour Party ended the year with a narrow lead in the opinion polls. They had a new Downing Street chief of staff in former election mastermind Morgan McSweeney, ready to deliver the same ruthless organisational discipline he applied to the successful general election campaign.
To coin a phrase, things could only get better.
Or so they must have thought. Since last Christmas, Labour has slipped from first to second to now third place in the poll of polls. A second tax raising budget has been delivered, breaking the Chancellor’s own promises. An anti-corruption minister resigning amid a corruption scandal. A deputy prime minister (and housing secretary) out over a housing scandal. A homelessness minister out over evicting her own tenants.
11 resignations
In total 11 ministers resigned or were sacked in some sort of scandal. And that’s before any Washington ambassadors are mentioned.
While the chaotic government continued to govern, chaotically, the economy suffered. Inflation rose to the highest in the G7, borrowing costs soared and it became clear that the Chancellor had become a Chino – Chancellor In Name Only, as Labour backbenchers forced her to U-turn over the most meagre benefits spending restraint.
Payrolled employment has fallen month on month on month, and all the while electoral events have upturned expectations and delivered defeat after defeat to Labour incumbents, mostly at the hands of Nigel Farage.
This Christmas, Labour has fallen from first to third. Reform and the Tories now hold Gold and Silver places in the polls. And the Prime Minister has been given a last minute present with a sting in its tail.
The trade union UNISON has this week elected a new hard left general secretary, who now gains a seat on Labour’s governing board. She joins Labour’s new deputy leader Lucy Powell as another voice who has publicly criticised Keir Starmer and might be willing to lend her vote to aid any leadership challenge that next year might hold.
After another torrid year, things don’t look like they’ll be getting any better for the Prime Minister in 2026.
Tom Harwood is deputy political editor of GB News