Labour’s love lost: Keir Starmer’s first 100 days

The Economist.

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Bloor. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. As part of our ongoing series about the swing states, states that could decide America's election. Today we're going to Nevada, where abortion is a key issue. And Yoshioka Masamitsu was one of the airmen who bombed Pearl Harbor. To the end of his days, he felt shame at his actions and respect for those who died. Our obituaries editor remembers his life. First up though, Keir Starmer, Britain's Prime Minister, was once asked if he was too dull to lead the country.

Are you too boring to be the next Prime Minister? Well, let me tell you that one.

The only thing that's boring is opposition.

That's what's boring.

If he was elected, Starmer said he'd get the boring stuff done right.

Britain needs stability, no more chaos.

He traded on his record as an experienced public sector administrator, promising to bring order to the state. But as Labour reaches 100 days in office, things have become rather disorderly. Surprisingly interesting, yet for the wrong reasons.

It's fair to say that the honeymoon period is pretty definitively over for the Labour Party.

Matthew Hallhouse is our Britain political correspondent.

So Keir Starmer's personal ratings have fallen at pretty striking speed. Now, they didn't have an easy start. Within a couple of weeks of Keir Starmer becoming Prime Minister, there was an outbreak of anti-immigration riots throughout the UK, which they had to respond to in between setting out the beginnings of their legislative agenda, there have been some pretty big political missteps and some rather striking management headaches in Downing Street. And there is this persistent complaint amongst Labour MPs that the political operation, the political messaging, his capacity to carve out the space that he wants for his project has been a little bit underwhelming.

So talk us through some of those moments that have stood out. The souring of the honeymoon?

One was around gifts. So, Keir Starmer accepted hospitality for football matches, and Taylor Swift gigs, and donations of clothing for him and his wife. All of which became a symbol for critics that this regime was not that much different to the old regime. And that was particularly damaging for two reasons. One, because he had come to power promising a new kind of government which would sweep all this stuff away. Having campaigned on that ticket, the absence of an ethics agenda of his own, reforms to the way in which MPs' gifts work or the government code of conduct. That didn't materialise really. So this affair seemed to drag on and they couldn't shake off. The second symptom of that slight sense of unreadiness for government has been a pretty bitter feud between some of Sir Keir Starmer's Downing Street aides and his chief of staff, Sue Gray, who at the weekend stepped down by mutual agreement, which really, less than 100 days in, is not the ideal start for a new administration.

So explain to us what happened with his Chief of Staff.

Sue Gray, unusually for a civil servant, had become a fairly high-profile figure even before she started working for the Labour Party. She was known as a civil service fixer, somebody who'd done the Partygate inquiry into Boris Johnson, who had a role which basically meant troubleshooting lots of problems for the government. The idea was that she would prepare the agenda for government because she knew all the highways and byways of the civil service, would make sure they'd be able to implement it pretty quickly. Pretty soon, there was lots of briefing and lots of feuding between her and other staff. They blamed her for obstructing the appointments of officials, for ensuring that they were paid less than they'd expected. We saw the briefing out of her own salary, which turned out to be higher than that of the Prime Minister, which is pretty embarrassing and not the sort of thing that you want to be emanating so quickly. So Starmer at the weekend decided to draw a line under this. She was effectively demoted to a new role, which is Envoy to the Regions and Nations. And in her place comes Morgan McSweeney as Chief of Staff. He's the guy who really orchestrated Starmer's successful leadership campaign of 2020, then was a really key figure in the remarkably successful general election of this year. The reason this is a problem for Starmer, apart from the obvious fact that losing your Chief of Staff 100 days in is not ideal, is that he campaigned effectively as an administrator. He was a guy who'd run failing public services. He's a guy who knew how to make bureaucracies work. He knew how to make the basic stuff happen. And he said, "That's my pitch." to you. I'm going to just make the government be the government again. You don't have to worry about all this chaos in Westminster. And yet, for this drama to happen so early into his premiership puts a little bit of a question mark under that claim. So really, the pressure is on him to prove that this is just an aberration and that he can really make the government function properly again.

You say he campaigned on being an administrator. He also famously campaigned on change. He was going to change things. How's he done on the policy agenda?

To give full credit to the government, they have got quite a broad first King's speech. We're starting to see that roll out. So they've done things like they've renationalised railways. Now we can have a big debate about whether that's the right policy, but that's what they've got. They have sent some pretty serious signals of intent on reforming the planning system. They want to see much, much more investment in things like battery factories and green energy. They've begun something of a tentative reset of relations with the European Union. We are seeing new legislation on workers' rights effectively tightening up Britain's fairly liberal labour market. Again, we can debate whether that's the right policy, but this is what they're about. And then this is all leading up to the budget, which is on October 30th, where from all the signals that we've had, they're going to be looking to effectively adjust the UK's borrowing rules to allow them to borrow a little bit more to invest in infrastructure, which is a big pivot away from the platform on which they campaigned. What irks Labour MPs, because this agenda really is music to the ears of Labour MPs, this is what they've been waiting for decades to see, what irks them is a slight lack of politics in all this, which sounds a slightly strange thing to say about a government. But what they're starting to notice is that there is a slight disinclination from Downing Street to really mount and prosecute big political arguments. So often when they do things, they're often done on fairly technical grounds.

And what do you mean by that?

So to take one example, Starmer has indicated that there will be a free vote on assisted dying, which would be a huge change in the law in the UK, a big social shift. But he says, well, you know, I made a promise to Esther Ranson before the election. She's a British television presenter who's now I was a campaigner for assisted dying. And so I'm just making good on the promise. He's not really willing to go out there and say, look, I think this is the right thing to do on first principles. Similarly, early on as part of their, what they called the inheritance, they had this difficult fiscal inheritance. They announced that there would be means testing winter fuel payment, which is a benefit paid to pensioners in the UK. Now there's lots of big principled arguments you can make to do that if that's what you want to do as a government. You could make arguments about intergenerational justice or about reform of the welfare system. But instead they reverted to a much less ambitious argument saying, well, when we were worried about a run on the pound. And this is slightly irritating Labour MPs who want to see their government making arguments for doing stuff on first principles, on Labour principles, as they would put it, rather than making continual appeals to authority, saying, well, the bond markets made us do it, the Treasury officials told us to do it, the government lawyers made us do it.

So, Matthew, are the questions about Starmer's capacity as an administrator going to affect his abilities to actually make policy?

It's very important they get this right because at the same time as having quite big ambitions for turning around the state of public services, they know that they're inheriting a wirehorse system that really is creaking pretty badly. Now, part of Starmer's worldview is that the fundamentals to this are having a much less conflictual relationship between ministers and the civil service. So on coming into power, they said that there'd be a big reset. They've got rid of fairly controversial targets to cap the headcount of the civil service. They've announced that everybody's going to be paid more. They're not going around saying everybody's got to be working in the office. 5 days a week, which was always very, very unpopular. The question is actually, once you've gone through that, are we going to see some more structural reforms in the way in which the civil service works? Some of these things are jaw-droppingly small, like ensuring that new staff manage to get a laptop, all of which you would think would be pretty achievable for someone like Starmer, who campaigned effectively on being a successful technocrat. How well he does on that agenda in, say, 6 months will really tell us whether the difficulties he's seen in his first 100 days were just were these teething problems just the product of a clash of personalities, or actually reflected something more fundamental about his skills and capacities as a leader?

Matthew, thank you so much for talking to me.

Thank you.

Tonight, Donald Trump will hold yet another rally in Reno, Nevada, and he isn't the only candidate to visit the city this week.

Well, hello, Reno!

Democratic running mate Tim Walz also hit the stump in Reno.

Donald Trump, turns out when he's talking about freedom, that government should be free to be in your doctor's office, to be in that school library, or to be— or to be pretty obsessed about being in your bedroom.

And he was trying to court the vote of one group in particular.

To Donald Trump and JD Vance, women don't trust you.

In Nevada, It isn't just the presidency that's on the ballot. Women's reproductive rights are too. In a tight contest, it's an issue that could make a difference. As part of our series on the swing states that will decide America's presidential election, today we're headed to Nevada to find out how abortion might shape the race for the White House.

Nevada is the only swing state that has consistently voted Democrat since 2008.

Sasha Nauta is our US social affairs editor.

If it went red, that would be a very bad sign for Kamala Harris. Although it's only 6 votes, the smallest of any swing state, in an election this close, it could just make the difference.

And who in Nevada, or where in Nevada, decides which way it goes?

Vegas is the short answer. I mean, Nevada has plenty of rural counties that will all go red, but they're all very small. The vast majority of people live in and around Las Vegas, and that will most likely decide the election. And that is where the Democratic machine is focusing. Nevada has an unusually large independent block of voters. There's a question of who will win them. It's had quite an organized Democratic machine run under Senator Harry Reid in the past. He was particularly good at mobilizing the unions, including those that represent the service sector workers. Vegas in particular has got a very large hospitality sector. Meanwhile, the Trump machine is also focusing on hospitality workers.

And for those hotel workers and people that get tips, you're going to be very happy because when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips, people making tips.

And although Democrats still have a slight lead in the polls, it's not a given that they will win, so it will definitely be a race to watch.

And what sorts of issues are the Democrats emphasizing then?

Well, the issues that both parties are really emphasizing are the economy, housing, and immigration. Those are the big subjects on voters' minds. The issue that Democrats are also very much emphasizing and Republicans are very much not emphasizing is abortion. And that's because partly, of course, that is a national issue that plays well for the Democrats, but also because Nevada is one of 10 states that will literally have a vote on abortion on the ballot in November. And so Dems are hoping that having that issue on the ballot will bring some voters to the polls who perhaps otherwise would have stayed at home.

And is that likely to work for them?

It could. These referendums have been happening since the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, which removed a federal protection for abortion access. The 6 referendums that have been held so far certainly suggest that it can mobilize voters, women in particular, to register. In some states, particularly in ban states, it seems more likely that it could mobilize voters who want to change the law in that state. I think for Nevada, it's a slightly trickier one because unlike, say, Missouri or Florida, where abortion will also be on the ballot, Nevada actually has a 24-week abortion limit, which is very liberal by standards of other states. What this referendum will be about is strengthening those rights by enshrining in the state constitution that you really can't take this right away. But I'm not as convinced that it will mobilize voters in the same way that it would in, say, Florida.

Okay, so what's going on in Florida, and are there other places where the issue of abortion is having a real impact?

Florida has provided abortions not just for Floridian women, but also for other women in the South that live in banned states. So I think that is a particular state where you could expect the issue to mobilize women. Arizona, which is obviously a swing state, currently has a 15-week abortion ban. If the referendum passes, this would be brought to a 24-week abortion ban. So that's a very tangible change in terms of affecting other races. You know, Montana will be one to watch. Donald Trump will win the state, but Jon Tester, the Democratic senator, is in a very tight race. And again, abortion could just help him hold on to his seat. Our colleague Aaron Braun went to a Tester rally in Bozeman, Montana, where Alexis McGill-Johnson, who's the president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, spoke at one of his campaign events. We trust women. Jon Tester trusts women. Before Joe Biden was replaced by Kamala Harris on the ticket, there was a particular hope that young voters, particularly young female voters who really weren't inspired at all by Joe Biden, would be mobilized by abortion. Kamala Harris seems to be more liked by that group, so it'll be hard to pick apart how much of the bump will come from her. Versus the abortion issue, but the two go quite nicely hand in hand. Of course, it's not just women who care about abortion. Most Americans care about abortion. It's just a more deciding issue for female voters than for male voters.

So, Sasha, you're saying it's hard to distinguish between the bump that Kamala Harris herself might be giving the Democrat vote and the issues such as abortion that she's highlighting. Tell me how she's actually going down as a female candidate, how that's affecting the vote.

I think Harris is doing a very clever thing actually in how she is framing abortion. She doesn't talk that much about abortion. She talks more about the freedom to make your own healthcare decisions. Those are things that men and women can get on board with on the whole. She doesn't make much at all of her historical candidacy, which Hillary Clinton did lots of. Harris seems to have learned the lesson that that can turn off male voters. It can actually also turn off older female voters, by the way. So she seems to be doing this very clever thing of not hiding her femininity, not hiding the fact that she's a woman, but she is also trying her very best to not alienate men. At the same time, you've got Donald Trump rather belatedly trying to undo some of the damage that he has done with the female vote. And he'll be speaking in Reno, in Nevada, and his campaign was very keen to emphasize in advertising that one of his main policies there, to remove the tax on tips for hospitality workers, would particularly benefit women. It's shoehorned, but it's understandable given the context of the race that he too is of course keen to ensure that he gets as much of the female vote as possible.

Fascinating stuff. Sasha, thanks so much for talking to me.

Thanks, Rosie.

And you can hear much more about the race for the White House in Checks and Balance, our US politics podcast. Last week, John Pridow and his team discussed Pennsylvania, which could be the deciding state in this election. Today's show is on the policies that divide Americans.

On the night of December 6th, 1941, Yoshioko Masamitsu had a frightening thought.

Anne Rowe is The Economist's obituaries editor.

He hadn't got much time left because probably tomorrow he would die. He would die in Hawaii because that was where Japan had decided to attack America. It was an honorable way to die, and he was pleased to have been chosen for this crucial mission. He thought his parents would be glad. On the other hand, he was only 23. He wasn't inclined either to go on the mission or to use the pistol which he had been issued with to kill himself in case he was captured. He didn't like the thought of any of this at all. All around, the attackers on America had been gathering. He was on a battleship called the Soryu, and there were 5 other battleships around. There were also more than 300 warplanes, all of which had gathered in the Kuril Islands, preparing to go towards Hawaii. Yoshioka got up before dawn in the dark to watch a torpedo being put on his airplane. The torpedo gleamed silver, and that told him it was the real thing. In the training practice, he'd been using wooden canisters with water in their warheads instead of explosives because real torpedoes were too expensive. So this mission was in fact the first time that he'd ever flown with a real live torpedo in his aircraft. There'd been a lot of debate among the crewmen on the Soryu as to where they were actually going. When the mission was announced, they were told to pack their shorts, so they thought, ah, it's going somewhere warmer. On the other hand, the pipes The pipes on the ship were lagged with asbestos, which suggested somewhere colder. And the very last place they thought it could be was America, because after all, America provided most of the petrol for their planes and ships. When he got into his plane, he was very glad for its sturdiness and its newness. It was certainly a great deal better than the than the battered old biplanes of the Imperial Japanese Navy that he'd been mending when he was 18. So they took off and flew east. The dawn was just breaking. They were flying into the sun, and gradually they approached. The sun got higher and was dazzling them through the glass. But in fact, as they got closer, they found towering white tumulus clouds and then billowing black smoke, the black smoke showing where the attack on the American ships moored at Pearl Harbor had begun. But he went over and looked down at the sea and he saw a long, slim shape and dropped his torpedo on it. Looking back, he saw that he had scored a direct hit because there were two thin white columns of spray going up 30 meters in the air on either side of it. But then, to his horror, he realized that this was not one of the actual active battleships that he'd hit. It was the USS Utah, which was a training ship. It had been demilitarized in 1931. There were a lot of men on board taking part in simple training, but it had no armaments. And he noticed as he flew on that the gun turrets had no barrels. It couldn't have defended itself against him. So though he'd been elated for that moment when he'd dropped the torpedo, he now felt awful. It was a mistake, and in fact, he sometimes said later that it was a failure. Nonetheless, he got home safely that day. And he was very lucky and went on to have a very lucky war, because of course that incident at Pearl Harbor drew America into the war, and for 4 years it raged. But he managed to keep out of the worst of it. He lived to this great age, still lucid and mobile and dapper, and with very clear memories of the raid. But he didn't talk about them. Until he was getting into his hundreds and felt, as many veterans do, that he had really better communicate this to someone. And then he also expressed how sorry he was for all the people who had died in the incident, not just for his comrades in arms, but also for the 58 men who had died on the Utah. He was sometimes asked, "Would you go to Pearl Harbor?" And he thought, probably not, because he wouldn't know what to say. But if he did get there, he would like to visit the graves of those crewmen on the Utah and pay his respects. Instead, he stayed in Japan, and he would go to the Yasukuni Shrine where the war heroes were remembered. When he said his prayers there for the dead, added another that he fervently hoped there would not be any more wars.

Anne Rowe on Yoshioka Masamitsu, who has died aged 106. That's it for this episode of The Intelligence. The show's editors are Chris Impey and Jack Gill. Our deputy editor is Jonjo Devlin, and our sound designer is Will Roe. Our senior producers are Rory Galloway and Sarah Larniuk. Our senior creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Maggie Kadifa and Benji Guy. And our assistant producer is Henrietta McFarlane, with extra production help this week from Peter Granitz, Emily Elias, and Jonathan Day. We'll all see you back here for the Weekend Intelligence tomorrow.