UK’s Starmer drives domestic agenda amid global flux

WHEN the Conservatives won the 2019 UK election, with the largest majority for the party since Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s wins, then prime minister Boris Johnson hoped to govern in Downing Street for two terms. However, within a few weeks, the political landscape was upended by the Covid-19 pandemic.

As new UK leader Keir Starmer prepares to make his first major speech as prime minister on Tuesday (Aug 27), he will be aware that Johnson’s experience highlights the famous political maxim of former prime minister Harold Macmillan – that it is often “events, dear boy, events” that decide the fate of governments. While Macmillan is widely seen as the originator of this insight, others had voiced it earlier.

After the 1918 election, for instance, future prime minister Winston Churchill asserted that the main concern for the then domineering coalition government was the “opposition of events”. The administration of the day had a 283-seat majority, over 100 more than what Starmer has today, despite the historic nature of his Jul 4 landslide win.

Only around 50 days into office, the Starmer government has already been subject to several significant, unexpected developments. The standout example is the riots across several urban areas in the United Kingdom in August after the murder of three young girls in Southport, England.

In the coming months, there are likely to be further unforeseen domestic challenges that will test the new administration. However, the biggest obstacles to the smooth running of the new government may be international in nature.

On this specific front, fortune has so far generally favoured Starmer. For instance, he has had the rare, early opportunity to meet a wide spectrum of world leaders in his first weeks in office, including at the Nato summit in Washington, DC, in July, followed by the European Political Community meeting at Blenheim Palace.

As the experience of the pandemic underlined, the international challenges that the new government may face could be largely, if not entirely, unexpected. However, perhaps the biggest defined uncertainty is the outcome of the presidential election in the United States, which could be exceptionally close, in November.

To be sure, the relationship between London and Washington could be warm under a Kamala Harris administration, even though there would not be full alignment across every issue. However, the bigger risk by far would emanate from a second Donald Trump presidency.

While this scenario is much discussed in London, and Europe at large, the full scale of challenges that Trump could inject into bilateral relations is huge.

The risks range from economic issues like sanctions, environmental ones such as climate change, and defence and military challenges from Ukraine to the Middle East. The disagreements between the traditionally close allies were legion from 2017 to 2021, and this could be worse from 2025 to 2029.

The best that Starmer can probably hope for, if Trump is elected, is to largely put aside political differences and try to forge a constructive partnership, even if this is much more transactional in nature than the British leader would prefer. This could be best built on the traditional ties between the two nations founded on demographics, religion, culture, law, politics and economics. It would be supplemented by the longstanding security cooperation which has traditionally been at the core of the bilateral relationship, given the close partnership between the two nations in areas such as intelligence and defence.

The UK, and indeed other key states in Western Europe too, can send a signal to Trump that the region is serious on this agenda. London was, in 2023, the largest military spender in Europe in absolute terms. The UK’s new strategic defence review under Starmer’s government is expected to make the case for London to raise, sooner rather than later, defence spending to a pledged commitment of 2.5 per cent of the gross domestic product.

However, while seeking the potential upside in the relationship, Starmer would be wise not to overestimate the UK’s ability to shape US power under Trump. He would also not be unaware that Trump’s outlook may care little for core UK interests, unless these align with his “America First” vision, despite his attachment to Scotland as the birthplace of his mother.

As we move forward to what might be a much more volatile time again in transatlantic ties, now is therefore the time for the UK to think ahead to very difficult decisions ahead. That there would be tensions under Trump is inevitable; the only question is when.

In this volatile international context, Starmer will try to push as fast ahead as possible with his domestic agenda so that it is not derailed. This goal of redefining the UK’s polity and economy into the 2030s is a huge ambition.

It has been widely pre-briefed to media that, on Tuesday, Starmer will say that his government has inherited a “societal black hole”, with things being “worse than we ever imagined; frankly – things will get worse before we get better”.

The prime minister will promise to “fix the foundations of this country”, warning that “change will not happen overnight”. “When there is rot deep in the heart of a structure, you can’t just cover it up. You can’t tinker with it or rely on quick fixes. You have to overhaul the entire thing. Tackle it at the root. Even if it’s harder work and takes more time,” he will say, according to a preview of a part of his remarks.

The speech comes as the government prepares for its first Budget, to be unveiled on Oct 30, which will force the Treasury to take tough decisions on spending and taxation. Building from the King’s Speech in July, a key element of this agenda is kick-starting reforms to the planning system to ramp up housebuilding and infrastructure development.

There is also the creation of Great British Energy, a new planned state-owned generator of green electricity to help make the country a clean-energy superpower. The party asserts the new company will cost over £8 billion (S$14 billion) and be paid for by a windfall tax on oil and gas companies. Labour has also repealed the current UK ban on new onshore wind farms.

In seeking to move forward with this big agenda, the government will seek to take advantage of the current vacuum of leadership in the Conservatives with the party not having a new leader until November. This provides a key opportunity for Starmer to try to set the political agenda for this five-year parliament.

Taken together, Labour now has a big agenda to deliver in government following its July win. While the party dominates the political landscape, whether it succeeds with its agenda may depend critically on events, including the outcome of the US presidential election.

The writer is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics