Sir Keir Starmer – two months on

How has Starmer fared in his first two months of government?

Sir Keir Starmer, former King’s Counsellor and Director of Public Prosecutions, is someone who could easily have been predicted to have little patience for the fractious nature of the Labour Party. Taking over the mantle as Leader of the Opposition from the unapologetically left-wing Jeremy Corbyn during the height of the pandemic, he promised to “bring [the] party together”. Ultimately, he ended up alienating much of his left flank with heavy-handed attempts to stamp out antisemitism within the party, culminating in the removal of his predecessor from membership altogether. Sir Keir Starmer won the 2024 General Election with a landslide on a mandate for “change”. The primary goal was to restore confidence in government and economic stability, with many hoping for a fresh start from the austerity policies and cronyism of the previous 14 years of Tory rule. 

However, his administration has already come under fire. Those on the right claim he has not done enough to combat illegal immigration, and those on the left baulk at his reticence in calling out transphobia, his red lines on Brexit, and his hesitation on restarting floundering Tory projects – such as High Speed 2 and planning reform. For Scotland, which sent a majority of Labour MPs to Westminster for the first time in almost a decade, the results underlined the hope of unionists that Scotland will vote for a UK government – just not a Tory one. 

The elephant in the room for Scotland is, of course, the PM’s stance on Gaza and transgender rights. Polls have consistently shown a divergence between the Scottish population and the UK population as a whole, which leaves a wedge for opponents to exploit the fragile coalition Starmer has constructed in his bid to dismantle the Tory hegemony of the past decade. Despite Labour winning a crushing 65% of Scottish Westminster seats, low voter turnout and an SNP opposition rocked by a fraud scandal give cause for pause. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar would do well to distance himself from Starmer’s Labour to avoid haemorrhaging hard-won votes in the upcoming Scottish Parliament elections, which have historically favoured the independence vote. Such could be swayed by an SNP opposition willing to tack closer to the Scottish majority view on Gaza and trans rights. 

It remains to be seen whether Starmer will allow Scottish Labour the independence to distance itself from its fellow MPs at Westminster. Thus far, his leadership style has seemed to be “my way or the highway,” and his success in the General Election is likely to vindicate his supporters and dampen his detractors. Indeed, when faced with a rebellion mere weeks after his installation as PM, he seems to have taken it as a chance to reiterate his uncompromising attitude, with seven MPs currently suspended over their refusal to vote to extend the two-child benefit cap. 

For now, Starmer is sticking to his promises on greater UK regional integration, instituting a Great British Energy (GBE) nationalised energy company, almost certainly to be based in Aberdeen, and meeting with First Minister John Swinney just three days after being elected for talks in which they were able to “work constructively together”. While he has shied away from direct recognition of Palestine, Starmer has nevertheless called for an immediate unconditional ceasefire, in a rare break from UK PMs mirroring their US counterparts on foreign policy. By dropping a challenge to the arrest warrant of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Starmer – and by extension Sarwar – can point to real, concrete differences between the new Labour administration and its Tory predecessors. On trans rights, Starmer remains far more equivocal. He is reserved in his condemnation of transphobia and has made comments in support of the Cass Review, a report branded by trans rights campaigners as “fundamentally flawed”. However, he has dropped the overt dog whistling and abuse perpetrated by his Conservative counterparts. 

Whether the economic benefits promised by Starmer’s “change” agenda will be enough to paper over the schisms between the various factions in his party remains unclear. For the many fresh-faced Scottish Labour MPs starting their new roles, hundreds of miles south in Westminster, the hope must remain that, for the sake of the party, Starmer’s heavy-handedness will not extend across the border. Their fortunes in the meantime remain far from assured.