LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is trying to change the narrative on his five-month-old government after plummeting approval ratings, business anxiety over tax hikes and protesting farmers clogging London streets.
Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch calls it an “emergency reset” by a floundering administration.
But Starmer’s office says the “Plan for Change” speech the prime minister will deliver on Thursday is not a relaunch or about-face, but “the next phase” in his government plan, intended to persuade voters that the government is making their lives better.
Starmer’s center-left Labour Party was elected in Jul — ending 14 years of Conservative government — on a promise to get Britain’s sluggish economy growing and restore frayed public services such as the state-funded National Health Service. But it has been criticized, including by Labour supporters, for failing to show people how their lives will improve any time soon.
The speech will set out “milestones” for measuring progress on economic growth, clean energy, reforming childcare and education, bolstering the NHS and cutting crime. It includes a pledge of 13,000 more neighborhood police officers within five years.
Starmer’s office said he will say that “hard-working Brits … reasonably want a stable economy, their country to be safe, their borders secure, more cash in their pocket, safer streets in their town, opportunities for their children, secure British energy in their home, and an NHS that is there when they need it.”
The government hopes to reverse a slew of negative headlines over its economic decisions — taken, it says, because the previous Conservative government left a 22 billion pound ($28 billion) “black hole” in the public finances.
Spending cuts have included removing from millions of retirees a payment that helps cover winter heating costs – a move that sat awkwardly with revelations that Starmer had accepted clothes and other freebies at a time when millions of people are struggling with the cost of living
The government’s first budget in late October included billions in new money for the health system, but also hiked a tax paid by employers, to the alarm of many businesses, and imposed inheritance tax on farmers for the first time in decades.
Thousands of farmers thronged the streets around Parliament in November to protest a levy they say will ruin many family farms. The government says three-quarters of farms won’t have to pay inheritance tax under the new rules.
Starmer also lost a member of his Cabinet last week, when Transport Secretary Louise Haigh resigned over an old fraud conviction involving a cell phone she’d reported stolen.
The bad news has sent Starmer’s poll ratings plunging deep into negative territory – though the opposition Conservatives are no more popular.
Starmer has had more success abroad, where he is trying to reset Britain’s relations with its European neighbors following years of acrimony over Brexit. But efforts to move closer to the bloc risk angering incoming President Donald Trump, who is hostile to the EU and has threatened to impose tariffs on European goods,
Members of Starmer’s government have been strongly critical of Trump in the past, but the Labour government has worked to build ties with the president-elect. Before the U.S. election, Starmer flew to New York for dinner with the then-Republican presidential candidate.
“When President Trump graciously hosted me for dinner in Trump Tower, I told him that we will invest more deeply than ever in this transatlantic bond with our American friends in the years to come,” Starmer said in a foreign-policy speech on Monday.
Starmer rejected the idea “that we must choose between our allies, that somehow we’re with either America or Europe.”
“The national interest demands that we work with both,” he said.
