How Keir Starmer hopes to avoid becoming Britain’s Biden

LONDON — Keir Starmer really doesn’t want to end up like Joe Biden. 

After a bumpy five months in office, the U.K.’s center-left prime minister will use a major speech on Thursday to shift focus from the abstract goal of boosting U.K. economic growth to the more tangible target of making voters feel better off.

In doing so, his administration has one eye on the fate of the U.S. president, who could boast enviable GDP figures — but still faced the wrath of voters, pinched by high inflation, who instead backed the return of Donald Trump.

In his speech, Starmer will promise to hit six numerical milestones by the next election covering health care, house construction, education, policing, net zero and the economy. 

Downing Street insists the attempt to refocus Starmer’s premiership is not a “reset” — even though his polling has plummeted dramatically.

But it’s certainly a sharp pivot for his fledgling administration — and one that government insiders said had been given fresh impetus by their observation of U.S. politics.

The “no-brainer” shift in Britain “has been in the making for some time but has been made all the more urgent by what’s happened in America,” said one Labour frontbencher, who like others in this article was granted anonymity so they could speak candidly. 

“When trust in politics is broken, rebuilding it requires what we deliver and how we describe it to be tangible, felt, real, and not abstract. If it’s abstract, it fails,” they said.

Go for growth

To understand the journey Labour has been on it helps to go back to the wild 49 days that Liz Truss spent as prime minister in 2022.

The fleeting Tory leader, who was associated with the more libertarian fringes of the Conservative Party, had made her pitch all about growth, growth and growth. 

But Truss’s radical plans, which featured £45 billion in unfunded tax cuts, blew up on first contact with reality and she was forced to resign by her own Tory MPs.

Labour certainly didn’t agree with how Truss went about it, but they did agree that securing growth was essential if Britain’s ailing public services were to be funded without hiking taxes.

In 2023, as then-PM Rishi Sunak sought to repair the damage caused by Truss, Starmer pledged to make the U.K. the fastest-growing economy in the G7, calling it one of five “missions” he’d take on if he became prime minister.

A Labour MP argued the target was “necessary for the time,” given that the focus was on the wider economy and the need to win over Conservative voters. 

But they have since noted that Biden’s economic successes received short shrift from voters — and now want to ground their growth aims in the everyday. “Living standards are the destination — growth is how we get there,” the MP said.

Or, as one party official put it: The G7 growth target was “half-cocked, it was nonsense.”

“These are things we put out in opposition but now we’re doubling down and they’ve been stress-tested,” they said.

On Thursday that mission is being honed.

In his speech, which will be delivered near London, Starmer is expected to unveil a target for increasing real household disposable income. It’s the kind of pledge ministers hope will highlight the “pocket-book policies” they’ve been hoping to land with the public. 

Fighting crime will also be a big feature, as Starmer sets out a promise to hire an extra 13,000 officers in visible community policing roles.

“People are tired of being promised the world, [only to have] short-term sticking-plaster politics letting them down,” the prime minister will say, according to Downing Street.

“Hard-working Brits are going out grafting every day but are getting short shrift from a politics that should serve them.

“They 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.”

But despite the talk of secure borders, Starmer is not expected to set out a target on migration — another issue that bedeviled Biden.

On the economic front, the OECD’s economic outlook, published Wednesday, contained one reason why Starmer might want to set aside the G7 target: The U.S. and Canada are forecast to significantly outperform Britain when it comes to GDP growth.

Government advisers insist the shift doesn’t mean they are accepting defeat on a virtually impossible target, and say that top-of-G7 growth remains the U.K.’s ambition. But they readily accept a pivot is needed.

A second Labour official said it’s “not helpful” for a government to tell voters “actually things are going great” when they just aren’t feeling it. 

“Biden did have the top economic growth in the G7 and yet voters booted him out because [they] didn’t feel the impact themselves,” the official said.

Sam White, who in opposition as Starmer’s chief of staff helped turn Labour’s fortunes around, warned of the scale of the challenge, given that the right-wing Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s more populist Reform party are “waiting in the wings pretending there are quick, easy answers.”

“The key question,” White said, “is can this government fend off the snake-oil salesmen long enough for their ‘decade of renewal’ to actually pay off?”

Starmer is not due to face another general election until August 2029 at the latest. Work now begins to ensure not only that the economy improves — but that voters truly feel better off.