Blitz Bureau
IT has been a shaky start for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as he completed 100 days in office on October 12. The PM himself admitted it’s been “choppy”. Starmer led his Labour Party to a resounding election victory against the Conservatives on July 4 this year.
In an interview with BBC’s Newscast to mark 100 days in office, he said so far his new job had been “much tougher than anything I’ve done before, but much better”.
He added: “I have been through this before (as leader of the Opposition). You get these days and weeks when things are choppy, there is no getting around that. That is in the nature of Government.”
“When I look at what it was I wanted to achieve in the first 100 days and ask myself, have we done what I wanted us to do, what I planned for us to do, the answer is yes.”
One senior Government figure admitted that it has been an “incredibly frustrating” period in which the work of Government has been drowned out by the mess around Downing Street power struggles and rows over concert tickets, spectacles and suits, according to Sky News.
Incredibly frustrating
That the Prime Minister was compelled to overhaul his top team and replace his Chief of Staff Sue Gray before his 100- day anniversary says it all.
Opinion polls suggest Starmer’s personal approval rating has plummeted after weeks of stories about feuding, freebies and fiscal gloom.
A survey this weekend by YouGov finds nearly half of those who voted Labour in the last General Election feel let down so far, while six in 10 disapprove of the Government’s record so far, against one in six who approve of the Starmer Government
Starmer’s most intractable problem is Britain’s sluggish economy, hobbled by rising public debt and low growth of just 0.2 pc in August, according to official figures. Starmer won the election on promises to remove years of turmoil and scandal under Conservative governments, get Britain’s sluggish economy growing and restore frayed public services such as the state-funded National Health Service.
Sluggish economy
His Government argues it has made a strong start: It has ended longrunning strikes by doctors and railway workers, set up a publicly owned green energy firm, scrapped the Conservatives’ contentious plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda and introduced Bills to strengthen rights for workers and renters.
The new Government also has faced crises at home, including days of far-right-fuelled anti-immigrant violence that erupted in towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland in the summer.
