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Sir Keir Starmer is marking his first year in Downing Street after suffering the shortest honeymoon of any prime minister in history, despite winning a massive 411 seats and a working majority of 156.After 365 days of his premiership, Labour is lingering in the polls at 23 per cent, behind Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK (28 per cent), and one of the defining images of this government so far may be chancellor Rachel Reeves in tears in the Commons earlier this week.When Starmer took office he promised growth and benefits for “working people”, but his national insurance tax rise has left fewer jobs and an economy that is stagnating.He has, though, pledged a 2.8 per cent increase to the NHS spending budget over a three-year period, amounting to a £30bn rise by 2028.Sir Keir has been a success on the international stage, with three trade deals and a pivotal role in the war in Ukraine and crises in the Middle East. He will have brought defence spending up to 2.5 per cent of GDP by April 2027 and aims to get to 3 per cent in the next parliament.The prime minister has become the “Trump whisperer”, winning over the erratic US president while rebuilding Britain’s international relationships and reputation around the globe. Despite the weakness of his position at home, with some in Labour suggesting he could be ousted as early as May next year, he remains the last reasonable option for a leader with fiscal responsibility at the head of a party that wants to take the brakes off spending and raise taxes.But he marked his first anniversary with a significant rebellion, which saw him ditch welfare reforms that would have saved his government £5bn a year, largely on disability benefits.Losing ground in the pollsThough Labour won 411 of 650 seats in last year’s general election, the party took home a more moderate 33.8 per cent of the national vote on a turnout of just 60 per cent, with some describing it as “the loveless landslide”. Labour lost 10%of its vote share since the electionNow, one year later, polls from Techne show that just 23 per cent of voters would opt for Labour in a general election. Yet the past year has seen Reform UK make an unprecedented climb in the polls, at 28 per cent of the vote (according to Techne) – leaving the Tories reduced to 18 per cent.Labour still leads among younger voters, finding favour with 29 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds. But older voters have turned to Farage and Reform, now the first-choice party for a third of voters aged 55 and over.Added to this, confidence in the government is running at an all-time low of just 25 per cent, and Sir Keir’s personal net favourability has fallen to a new low of -46, according to YouGov.Freebies and giftsPart of his rapid loss in popularity came when it emerged that Sir Keir, his wife Lady Victoria and a number of senior cabinet ministers had received controversial free gifts. These included hospitality at Arsenal, worth £8,750 per game, for the PM to watch his favourite football team.£39,000clothes and accommodation donated to the PM by Lord AlliSir Keir received nearly £19,000 worth of work clothes and several pairs of glasses, as well as £20,000 worth of accommodation, from Waheed Alli, the former chair of online fashion retailer Asos. The PM also received a £4,000 ticket from the Football Association to see Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium. It also emerged that he had failed to declare a gift of clothes for his wife Victoria from Lord Alli.Mastering the trade dealThe UK has negotiated two major trade deals, while a third has come in the form of a “Brexit reset” with the EU. The UK-India trade agreement was years in the making, but was finally signed in May this year. The deal represents a £25.5bn boost to trade, according to government estimates. Meanwhile, as Donald Trump unleashed tariffs across the world, the UK came out relatively unscathed – a feat that has largely been attributed to Sir Keir’s negotiations with his US counterpart. £6.5bn savedfrom negotiating a US tariff deal (estimated)By bringing down automotive tariffs from 25 to 10 per cent, and eliminating levies on British cars, the US-UK trade deal is estimated to cut the blow from tariffs in half – from £10.8bn to £4.3bn, according to analysis revealed by The Independent. The tariff on steel, though, remains at 25 per cent and is subject to more negotiations.Voting recordIn the past year, Sir Keir voted just nine times in parliament, three of which were in the last month. The prime minister has blamed international engagements for his absences.9 votesby Starmer in parliament since becoming PMHe has weighed in exclusively on welfare, assisted dying, immigration, winter fuel payments and the Budget.By contrast, his predecessor Rishi Sunak voted 22 times in his first year as prime minister. Ups and downs in immigrationSir Keir’s Labour can claim a victory in tackling migration, one of its manifesto pledges. This government has in part overseen the largest drop in net migration in recent history, down from 739,000 in the year ending June 2024 to 431,000 in the year to December 2024. At least six months of this period was under his predecessor Rishi Sunak’s government, with net migration already dropping from its peak in June 2023. These figures are the lowest in over three years, following spiralling immigration post-Brexit. Net migration is still twice as high as pre-Brexit levels, and far from the 100,000 target set by David Cameron. Small boat arrivals paint a far less optimistic picture. The number of people crossing the channel has increased significantly under Labour, by 34 per cent. There have been around 42,000 small boat arrivals in the year ending 30 June 2025, compared to 31,000 in the previous year, and the figure is on course to exceed the peak of 45,000 in 2022.Resignations and rebellionsSir Keir has already faced eight resignations by ministers, most notably international development minister Anneliese Dodds, who quit over brutal cuts to the UK’s aid budget from 0.5 per cent of GDP to 0.3 per cent. Two ministers resigned over cuts to disability benefits, while Treasury secretary Tulip Siddiq stepped back amid a corruption investigation involving her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, a former prime minister of Bangladesh. Just weeks after the election, Labour suspended seven MPs who voted against the whip for an amendment to scrap the two-child benefit cap, while a further 42 abstained. 7Labour MPs voted against the whip last JulyThree MPs – John McDonnell, Apsana Begum and Zarah Sultana – have still not been readmitted into the Labour fold nearly 12 months later. Ms Sultana has since announced she is starting a new party with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.The government’s welfare bill, which passed just this week by 335 to 260 votes, faced major criticism for risking a restrictive system that could limit benefits for those who need them most. A total of 49 Labour rebels voted against it. A year of U-turnsIn 12 months, Sir Keir has reversed or significantly altered his stance on five major political issues.In addition to watering down this week’s welfare bill, Sir Keir announced that winter fuel payments will be extended to a further 7.5 million pensioners, after raising the threshold for eligibility early in his government to help fill a black hole of £22bn Ms Reeves claimed to have found in the country’s finances. 5significant U-turns by StarmerBefore the election, Labour promised it would not increase national insurance payments, but then increased employer national insurance contributions by 2 per cent.Sir Keir also finally agreed to launch an inquiry into grooming gangs, after months of deeming it unnecessary and describing those calling for one as “far right”. He also said that the “Waspi” women would not receive compensation for the increase in the state pension age, having promised before he was elected that a Labour government would compensate them.Inflation and debtOverall, inflation has gradually increased over a year of Labour governance, landing at 3.4 per cent in May. This is up from 2.2 per cent in July 2024, the month of the general election, leading to concerns about interest rates.Critics have claimed that after the last Tory government brought inflation down to 2.2 per cent, Labour are now beginning to lose control of it again. £2.86 trillionpublic sector debtThe UK’s national debt stands at £2.86 trillion, up by £130bn since the general election, according to the Office for National Statistics. Overall, debt makes up 96.4 per cent of Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP), according to the latest figures – up from 95.9 per cent last May. This is despite fiscal rules limiting debt imposed on the Treasury by Ms Reeves.This climbing debt comes with a hefty interest bill, to the tune of £5.6bn a year. Benefits and unemployment 9% of the budgetis spent on working-age benefitsAn analysis by The Independent earlier this year found that the number of disability benefit recipients in the UK has risen more than other countries since Covid. However, the state spends less on welfare overall compared with other European countries. Nonetheless, welfare spending made up nearly a third (28 per cent) of the Labour government’s first Budget, at £303bn, with the majority going towards state pensions and benefits for the elderly population. Working-age benefits alone cost £117.6bn, around 4.2 per cent of GDP, which is more than defence and education spending. At the same time, the UK is the only G7 nation that has seen economic inactivity increase since Covid. It currently stands at 21.3 per cent of working-age people.But economic inactivity has gone down over the first year of Sir Keir’s Labour government, from 9.47 million people up to June last year, to 9.19 million people in the latest figures (April 2025).The number of payrolled employees dropped by 115,000 in the last year following the 2 per cent national insurance increase. The UK unemployment claimant count for May 2025 increased on the month and the year to 1.735 million.Female MPsLast July, the UK parliament became the most diverse in British history, in terms of both gender and ethnicity. Four in 10 MPs are women, with 263 female MPs elected across most parties in parliament.72%of women in parliament are Labour MPsThe majority of this group (72 per cent) are Labour representatives, with nearly half of all Labour MPs being women (190 out of 403).There are seven female politicians in the cabinet, including deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and chancellor Ms Reeves. More

It usually takes years in power before a political leader’s name is followed by an “-ism” to define their guiding philosophy.But as Sir Keir Starmer marks his first anniversary as prime minister, he has already offered up “Starmerism” as a concept for himself without even bothering to wait for the usual friendly commentator to invent it for him.Some portray it as his unfortunate nicknames “two tier Keir” (from the rows over justice and welfare) or “never here Keir” (from his many trips abroad) as his defining terms, but he clearly has something very different in mind.His definition of “Starmerism” actually slipped out when he was taking questions from journalists on the plane as he flew out to Canada for the G7 summit.Starmer with his wife Victoria More

A Reform UK-run council has removed all transgender-related books from children’s sections in its libraries, the leader has announced.Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran said in a post on social media the books will be removed with immediate effect in a “victory for common sense in Kent”.Councillor Paul Webb, cabinet member for communities and regulatory services at the council, said that he acted to remove all the books after concerns from a resident.In a video posted on X, he said: “I was recently contacted by a concerned member of the public who found trans ideological material and books in the children’s section of one of our libraries.“I looked into it and this was the case. I have issued an instruction for them all to be removed from the children’s section of any of our libraries. They do not belong in the children’s section of our libraries.“Our children do not need to be told they were born in the wrong bodies and from today this will stop.”It is understood that the books will not be completely removed but rather relocated to different sections in libraries.Linden Kemkaran (front centre), leader of the Reform UK Kent County Council group, with the Reform UK councillors More

Keir Starmer has spent much of his first year in office trying to prepare the public for pain. But as our recent Independent Ask Me Anything Q&A revealed, it’s the government now feeling the heat – politically bruised, economically cornered, and increasingly exposed on its central promise: stability in exchange for tax rises.Rachel Reeves’s tearful moment in the Commons, followed by a Labour rebellion that forced a U-turn on welfare reform, summed up the bind. The “slate” Reeves claimed to have wiped clean last year has filled up again – and the bill, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, could soon run to £40bn in new tax rises. Not exactly the clean break with austerity Labour once promised.In this context, Starmer’s new 10-year NHS plan looks less like a policy announcement than a political lifeline: Labour’s equivalent of the early 1980s recovery that rescued Margaret Thatcher. The plan’s launch was designed to answer the question Reeves and Starmer still haven’t resolved – what’s the reward for all this pain?Meanwhile, discontent on Labour’s left is turning into open revolt. Zarah Sultana, suspended for opposing the two-child benefit cap, has quit the party to co-lead a new political movement with Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn says “discussions are ongoing”, but the direction is clear. Labour’s internal tensions – over welfare, war, and public services – are no longer just ideological. They are electoral.Below is more from the Q&A that explores what the left’s breakaway movement and the looming autumn Budget could mean for a government now grappling with a welfare reform crisis and mounting pressure on Keir Starmer’s leadership.Q: Are there now two Labour parties: Starmer’s leadership circle vs the rest?CriticaleyeA: There has always been a tension between the party in the constituencies and the party in parliament. Sometimes the boundaries shift; as now, a lot of Labour MPs aligned with party members on the disability benefits issue. But the most successful period of the party’s history was when a fairly small group around Tony Blair controlled the party and maintained a coalition of support among Labour MPs and members. Always worth remembering that party members voted for David Miliband rather than his brother in 2010. Starmer has failed to build such a broad coalition in the party.Q: If Rayner became PM, would she try a different economic approach – and would the markets tolerate it?Paul KearneyA: I don’t believe that Rayner would try a different economic approach if by that you mean changing the fiscal rules. The rules are not arbitrary or foolish self-imposed restrictions designed to prevent a Labour government from doing nice things. They are essential to maintain the confidence of the markets. Rayner is a pragmatist, and I think she understands that instinctively. Her advantage is that she might be able to communicate the rationale for the economic strategy better than either Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves.Q: Will Corbyn’s new party attract Labour defectors?JaseA: I think one of the reasons Jeremy Corbyn has been reluctant to launch a new party is that he understands the British electoral system better than most. He knows that he can win in Islington North as an individual with long name recognition, but that parties to the so-called left of Labour are more or less doomed to irrelevance. The last time a left-wing party, as opposed to famous individuals, won seats in the House of Commons was the Communist Party in 1945, and both those seats were lost in 1950.Since then, George Galloway has won seats as an individual, but his Workers Party has not.Q: Is Angela Rayner emerging as Labour’s real leader?SophieeeeeeeA: She has a better instinctive grasp of politics and is a better communicator than the prime minister. Not only did she lead the second capitulation to the Labour rebels over the disability benefits bill, seeing that it was necessary to avoid the risk of defeat, but she made sure that the world knew that she was pushing for it.It has been suggested that she pushed Keir Starmer to ditch the PIP section of the bill when the government was going to win the vote as a way of weakening the prime minister. I doubt that this is true: I think her argument was correct that the vote was on a knife-edge and the government could not afford the risk of losing – it was better to postpone and fight another day.Q: Should Starmer reshuffle his top team – and should Kendall go?BBenBA: In my view, reshuffles never work as a way of recovering government popularity, and often have the effect of moving good ministers just as they are gaining momentum. I think Kendall was asked to do the impossible, but that she should have had a plan ready in opposition for going back to in-person assessments for disability benefits, tackling the rise in mental ill-health claims, and so on. But she should be replaced only if there is someone who could obviously do a better job.Q: Was the welfare reform ever viable?LozA: It was doomed from the start, and Alan Campbell, the chief whip, told Keir Starmer so in March, when it was launched. It was forced on Liz Kendall by Rachel Reeves, who needed to find £5bn a year by the end of the parliament to keep the public finances on a sustainable footing. Kendall couldn’t offer changes such as switching back to in-person assessments instead of telephone/Zoom interviews, which should reduce the number of claims granted, but which couldn’t be counted by the Office for Budget Responsibility as savings because no one could be sure of them. Hence, the cuts to the amounts that could be claimed and restrictions on claiming them, which were unacceptable to enough Labour MPs to wipe out the government’s majority.Q: Why won’t Labour get rid of Starmer now?Dave Smith A: Party members would like to get rid of him already, a year after he delivered the second-largest parliamentary majority. A Survation/LabourList poll at the end of May found 42 per cent of members want a change of leader before the election; 40 per cent did not; the rest didn’t know.The most popular alternative among party members is Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, but as he is not an MP, he is out of the running. There is currently no constituency in the country that Labour could be sure of winning in a by-election to get him back into parliament.So the members are arguing, in effect, for Angela Rayner to take over. It is not an outrageous idea: she is one of the few in cabinet to have enhanced their reputation in the first year (see below). But she is not very popular with the public. Would she really change Labour’s fortunes dramatically? Perhaps we should wait and see how many houses have been built by 2028.Q: Should Morgan McSweeney go?Ben BrownA: I broadly agree with the prime minister: McSweeney won the election for Labour ministers, who should therefore pipe down and do what he says. Beyond that, anyone calling for the PM’s adviser to go is really calling for a change of PM. I think it is too early for that.These questions and answers were part of an ‘Ask Me Anything’ hosted by John Rentoul at 2pm BST on Friday 4 July. Some of the questions and answers have been edited for this article. You can read the full discussion in the comments section of the original article.For more insight into UK politics, check out John’s weekly Commons Confidential newsletter. The email, exclusive to Independent Premium subscribers, takes you behind the curtain of Westminster. 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On Thursday evening, ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana announced plans to set up a new left-wing political party alongside Jeremy Corbyn, taking aim at the government for having “completely failed to improve people’s lives”. “Westminster is broken but the real crisis is deeper,” Ms Sultana said, adding that “just 50 families now own more wealth than half the UK population”. She promised to offer an alternative to “managed decline and broken promises” – but what exactly will that look like in practice? Here, The Independent runs through everything we know so far about the new left-wing offering in Westminster. Zarah Sultana announced plans to set up a new left-wing political party alongside Jeremy Corbyn More

For a beleaguered Keir Starmer, his former boss Jeremy Corbyn is turning into the political equivalent of one of those movie villains who simply refuses to be defeated.Despite being effectively thrown out of the party, Corbyn managed to get re-elected last year as an independent in the neighbouring seat to Starmer in north London.But now his plan to create a new party on the left with another Labour exile, Zarah Sultana, looks like it could be more than just a chaotic vanity project.Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana join a picket line More

Sir Keir Starmer has revealed that Donald Trump reached out to console him in the wake of his brother’s death last year. The prime minister said he and the US president’s focus on family values is a “point of connection” for the pair, something he suggested helped land the trade deal with the US. The prime minister admitted that while they may have “different political backgrounds”, he and Mr Trump have managed to build a “good personal relationship”. Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer being interviewed by Nick Robinson in the Terracotta Room at 10 Downing Street More

Welcome to an exclusive Ask Me Anything session with me, John Rentoul, The Independent’s chief political commentator.Keep scrolling for more. If you want to jump straight to the Q&A, click here.Recent attempts by Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership to tackle welfare reform have exposed deep tensions within Labour, shaking its identity to the core.The standoff over disability benefits, with dramatic rebellions from both loyalist and Corbynite MPs alike, laid bare the struggles Labour faces in balancing fiscal responsibility with social justice. Starmer’s handling of the revolt has damaged his standing, and it seems that only deputy leader Angela Rayner emerged stronger, prompting whispers about the future leadership of the party.It comes as former Labour MP Zarah Sultana announced she will co-lead a new political party with ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, accusing the government of having “completely failed to improve people’s lives.” Sultana, who lost the Labour whip last year after voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, had remained a member of the party despite no longer sitting as a Labour MP.So, can Labour survive this identity crisis? Can the party reconcile its historic commitment to working people with the tough policy decisions required in today’s political climate – and craft a credible alternative to austerity without alienating its own members?What about Rachel Reeves, Liz Kendall, and Angela Rayner? Will these recent developments change the balance of power within the party, or push one of them out entirely?Join me live at 2pm BST on Friday, 4 July to discuss Labour’s internal battles, the challenges facing Starmer’s government, and what the future holds for the party.Submit your questions in the comments below. If you’re not already a member, click “sign up” in the comments section to participate. For a full guide on how to comment, click here.Don’t worry if you can’t see your question right away – some may be hidden until the Q&A starts. See you at 2pm! More