When Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain gathered senior advisers at 10 Downing Street last summer, more than 120 lawmakers from his Labour Party were in open rebellion and planning to vote against his plans to overhaul the country’s welfare system.
You’re seriously saying you don’t think we can win the vote? Mr. Starmer asked, incredulously, according to a person who requested anonymity to relate the tense, closed-door meeting. Later that day, after weeks of fighting his own party, Mr. Starmer conceded defeat and performed what politicians in Britain derisively describe as a “U-turn” on the policy.
For a prime minister who had come to power a year earlier on the strength of a resounding landslide victory, it was an unexpected loss. And it was one of a series of forced reversals that has driven his approval ratings to some of the lowest levels in British history.
Fewer subsidies for home heating bills? Abandoned in the face of outrage from pensioners. Higher taxes for farmers? Not after tractors converged on London. A mandatory digital ID for all residents? Now it’s voluntary. Higher property taxes on Britain’s historic pubs? Mr. Starmer backed down after 1,400 pubs banned Labour politicians from having a pint.
It has all left Mr. Starmer so politically wounded that when a scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, arrived this month, he faced serious calls from his own party to step aside.
Lawmakers in the prime minister’s party remain furious about his decision to name Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States in light of newly released documents showing that Mr. Mandelson and Mr. Epstein were close friends. They demanded to see thousands of documents regarding Mr. Starmer’s decision-making, which could be released any day.
So far, Mr. Starmer has avoided an ouster, despite the global embarrassment surrounding the Mandelson affair. The prime minister’s fate now appears to hinge on how badly his reputation affects his fellow politicians. A late January poll from Ipsos found that only 20 percent of British adults said they liked Mr. Starmer. His net favorability score was -50, matching the lowest Ipsos has found for a Labour leader since it began tracking it in 2007.
A special election to fill a parliamentary seat near Manchester next week will be a crucial test of Mr. Starmer’s drag on his party. And in May, Labour Party members are bracing themselves to lose big in legislative races in Scotland and Wales, as well as in local councils across England.
If that happens, Mr. Starmer’s own party could force him from office years before elections would normally be called in 2029.
Mr. Starmer has had successes. Waiting lists for National Health Services have shrunk. The government has lowered some energy costs for homeowners, helping to ease the pain of inflation. Mr. Starmer has also carefully navigated the challenge of dealing with President Trump, and he became a leading voice in assembling a coalition to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression.
“He has a clear five-year mandate from the British people to deliver change, and that is what he will do,” said Anna Turley, the Labour Party chair. “His Labour government is tackling the cost of living, cutting N.H.S. waiting lists and restoring pride in local communities.”
But in interviews, current and former aides expressed frustration with the way Mr. Starmer has managed his domestic agenda and deep pessimism about his ability to remain in office. Those aides, like several others close to Mr. Starmer interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Several said he was decent and hard-working, but not charismatic, and they say he has struggled to find a compelling way to sell policies in an often hostile media environment. More than one insider described the prime minister as a “dead man walking” in recent days.
That seemed hard to imagine when Mr. Starmer took office in the summer of 2024, backed by 411 of the 650 seats in Parliament. In the months that followed, the prime minister called for a “national renewal” in Britain, promising to stabilize the country’s economy and improve public services.
But his political adversaries have seized on his tendency to give up in the face of criticism from his own party members, the public, the media or his adversaries.
“The reason he U-turns all the time is because he is clueless,” Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, said recently. “He is blowing around like a plastic bag in the wind — no sense of direction whatsoever.”
The reversal on welfare reform drew the most attention to Mr. Starmer’s increasing willingness to back down when faced with pressure, according to several people close to him.
Mr. Starmer’s team convened daily across from the Cabinet Room to plot strategy for the plan, which would have cut the country’s spiraling welfare costs by reducing the number of disabled people eligible for benefits.
The proposal roiled the party, where many Labour lawmakers and voters viewed it as an effort to save money by making life harder for vulnerable people and the opposite of what a center-left government should be about.
After one closed-door discussion about the bill, two of Mr. Starmer’s aides said they saw progress. But moments after it ended, more than 100 lawmakers signaled support for an amendment that would gut the plan.
In the end, Mr. Starmer bowed to the pressure, saying that the welfare changes would only apply to new claimants, not existing ones. James Lyons, who served as Mr. Starmer’s communications director during that period, called it the moment that “broke his authority.”
“It was the most audacious sort of parliamentary ambush that I’ve ever seen,” said Luke Sullivan, who was Mr. Starmer’s political director before he became prime minister.
There were also other reversals, too.
In one early move, Mr. Starmer proposed narrowing the eligibility for home heating subsidies that help millions of retired people in the country, saying it would help fill budget shortfalls left by the Conservative Party.
After months of fiercely defending the move, Mr. Starmer caved.
“I think there is a lack of consistency of overarching narrative and coherence that allows the public to understand why they’re making particular decisions,” said Claire Ainsley, who served as Mr. Starmer’s policy director from 2020 to 2022. “People are like, ‘This isn’t the change that we voted for.’”
Part of the change that Mr. Starmer initially promised was a new, tougher approach to illegal migration, an issue helping to power the rise of Reform U.K., a right-wing, populist party. In a speech in May last year, Mr. Starmer unveiled the new approach, saying that without a crackdown, “we risk becoming an island of strangers.”
That phrase sparked outrage, particularly among progressive Labour Party members, who said it echoed a phrase from incendiary remarks known as the “Rivers of Blood speech.” It was delivered in 1968 by Enoch Powell, a Conservative lawmaker who railed against immigration that he said made British citizens “strangers in their own country,” predicted race riots and quoted a voter who warned him: “In 15 or 20 years’ time the Black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”
After a month of complaints, Mr. Starmer acknowledged his mistake, telling his biographer that he deeply regretted using the phrase. He also apologized for saying that migrants had done “incalculable damage” to the country and said that his language addressing the issue “wasn’t the way to do it in this current environment.”
The admission was welcomed by many. But inside of No. 10, the comments were seen by some of his top aides as a political disaster that made him look weak and indecisive.
Several advisers who were there at the time said there was a sense of despair among the staff about the effect the apology would have on the public.
Some of those watching Mr. Starmer from outside his government were surprised.
“You were giving a strong message on immigration, but you then pulled the rug and from under the sentiment of the speech,” Ms. Ainsley, the former policy director, said. “It fed into an impression that the prime minister wasn’t necessarily driving things.”
Michael D. Shear is a senior Times correspondent covering British politics and culture, and diplomacy around the world.
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