All successful governments need a people. The voters who help define their project and will stand by them even in the toughest times. Think of the aspirational class drawn to Thatcherism by the Right to Buy and share sales, or those whose lives were transformed by New Labour’s tax credits and Sure Start.
Who are Keir Starmer’s people? Five months into this Labour government, the answer is not as clear as it should be. Instead, this is an administration that is proving adept at making enemies and less good at making friends (59 per cent of voters now disapprove of the government’s record so far).
It started with pensioners. Rachel Reeves’ unexpected means-testing of the winter fuel allowance (a benefit, remember, introduced by Gordon Brown in 1997) gave elderly voters – and their relatives – an immediate reason to dislike this government. It’s no accident that Scottish Labour – facing an election in 2026 – has vowed to restore universal payments.
Then came farmers. The changes to agricultural property relief are designed to prevent the wealthy buying up land for tax avoidance purposes. But the measure is seen as emblematic of an administration that doesn’t understand the countryside. “Farmers feel completely shafted by this government,” Steve Reed, the Environment Secretary, told the New Statesman before the election. How do they now feel about Labour? (Perhaps much the same as the business owners hit by higher National Insurance.)
Pensioners and farmers, you might say, are less critical than others to Starmer’s electoral coalition. To govern is to choose. But Labour is now in danger of falling out with its supposed friends. Starmer has been forced to write to civil servants praising their work after declaring that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”. That line jarred with the efforts the government has made since July to reset fraught relations.
Meanwhile, public sector workers are threatening new strikes after ministers recommended a 2.8 per cent pay rise for teachers and NHS staff next year. As Unison, one of the unions closest to Starmer has noted, that increase would be “barely above the cost of living” (inflation is forecast to average 2.6 per cent next year). Remember that public sector pay is still below its 2010 real-terms level despite the rises awarded by the government.
Cabinet ministers believe that they have taken a “balanced” approach. Another government, they say, might have gone further on capital gains tax (which rose only from 20 per cent to 24 per cent) or on agricultural inheritance tax (which will be levied at 20 per cent rather than the full 40 per cent). It might have abolished the expensive “triple lock” on the state pension.
Public sector pay restraint – which Starmer warned of in his Jim Callaghan-esque TUC speech (“I owe you that candour”) – reinforces this approach. But the risk is of alienating all and pleasing none.
When the economy is barely growing, politics will always be defined by invidious choices. But there are still ways to preserve an electoral coalition. During the austerity era, George Osborne was careful to shield the Conservative base as far as possible: pensioner benefits and the triple lock were protected; homeowners were enriched by ultra-low interest rates and mortgage subsidies. The government also made strenuous efforts to maintain the personal popularity of David Cameron (it was Osborne who was booed in public). This ended in something few originally thought possible: a majority Tory government.
What does a comparable Labour strategy look like? Who are the voters who will go to the wall for Starmer? That’s the question the government soon needs to answer.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Why Rachel Reeves is channelling Thatcher]
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