Before the election, Keir Starmer said he was determined to ensure that he didn’t let being prime minister deny him time with his family and made a kind of promise to his wife and two children that Friday nights would be sacrosanct. When we meet him at No 10, we wonder how that is working out. “In some respects, that’s a little bit easier because it’s a 30 seconds commute,” he says, pointing upwards to the living quarters. “The kids can pop in when they get back from school, even if it’s only for a few minutes before they go up to the flat.”
On the other hand, the schedule since Labour took office has been “relentless”. Getting the government going on its domestic agenda has been accompanied by a packed calendar of foreign travel, including a Washington summit, a Nato summit, visits to Italy and Ireland, and two trips to “reset the relationship with key partners” to France and Germany. “Making time is important, because you’re a better decision-maker if you have a bit of time with your family.” He speaks with regret about cancelling his summer holiday after the August outbreak of far-right violence on the streets. “It would have been good to have got away over the summer for a break, if I’m honest, because we’ve been running at this for a long time. Whilst the campaign itself was six and a bit weeks, the truth is we’ve been in campaign mode since at least the turn of the year. I haven’t had a day off since Rishi stood out there in the rain without his umbrella. I also know that this is not a good thing. Everybody, including politicians, needs to get away from time to time to have holidays.”
There may be some public sympathy that he has not had a day off. Much less so about the revelations that he’s been happy to take a lot of freebies. The value of the gifts he accepted in the last parliament comes in north of £100,000, ahead of any other MP. Given the stink it is causing, does he now regret being so free with the freebies? “It is very easy to say politicians shouldn’t have any gifts,” he responds. “But it is quite tricky in practice.”
He focuses his justification on accepting hospitality at football matches, presumably because he thinks he can muster a more solid defence for this than he can for some of the other gift-taking that is raising eyebrows. He’s had a season ticket to watch Arsenal “for a very long time. I go with my boy, I go with our friends and we go in the stands. That is what we do, week in and week out, during the season.”
If he’d carried on using the stands, “they’d have to put in a hell of a security detail to get me in there which would cost quite a lot of money. As a result, I was offered a gift to move elsewhere in the stadium to watch the game.” He’d rather be in the stands but contends that it would be “a bit self-indulgent” to insist on it “if that costs the taxpayer a fortune in extra security”.
Some voters may find that a reasonable argument. But what about the rest of it: the Taylor Swift and Coldplay tickets along with the clothing and “luxury eyewear” valued at more than £2,000 bought for him by a wealthy Labour donor who was temporarily given a pass to No 10 after the election and who also provided high-end clothes for the prime minister’s wife, Victoria.
The typical voter has to pay for clothes and treats out of their own pocket and surely will be wondering why a prime minister who says he is the champion of working people isn’t doing the same. Doesn’t this make people think it’s no different to the Tories?
He swerves this challenge. “If you look at what we promised to voters, we promised that we would bring about change. Make sure the economy works so … they were better off. Make sure the health service is working properly. Bring down their energy bills.” At the end of his list, he says: “That’s what I’ll be judged on. I know I’ll be judged at the end of the five years, and rightly so.”
But might he also not be judged on freebies which aren’t a happy fit with his manifesto commitment to introduce a much more ethical regime to government. “I’ve always said the rules have to be complied with. What I went after [Boris] Johnson on was not complying with the rules.”
Subsequent to our conversation, and following revelations that Angela Rayner, Rachel Reeves and other members of Labour’s top team have taken donations to buy outfits, the government has surrendered to pressure to stop accepting clothes as gifts. But during our interview, Starmer refuses to agree that it would be best not to take any freebies at all.
“Well look,” he says defiantly. “I mean, am I going to now say I won’t go to another Arsenal game? Then, no.” What about the designer specs? “I don’t need any new specs for a long time.”
The other toxic stream of stories in the run-up to the Labour conference has been about infighting at No 10. The most recent outbreak of backbiting has centred on the salary paid to his chief of staff, Sue Gray. At £170,000 a year, her remuneration comes in higher than his own. Does this indicate that she is the most powerful person in Downing Street?
“I’m not going to talk about individual salaries for any member of staff,” he responds before saying something that shouldn’t really need saying. “I’m the person who runs the government. I’m the person that takes the decisions and I’m the person that takes responsibility for those decisions.”
Details of who is earning what at No 10 and how X is jostling for influence with Y do not come from nowhere. They’re coming from people on the inside passing information to journalists. Why is his ship such a leaky one? “There shouldn’t be any leaking,” he says, not denying that leakers are responsible. “That just damages everybody.”
He doesn’t quarrel with the suggestion that he needs to get a grip before it spirals completely out of control. “It’s my job to do something about that and I accept that responsibility.”
He argues that it is highly unfair to suggest that squabbles about salaries is the only story to be told about his government. “In the other column, I would point out: what is No 10 focused on every day? What’s the cabinet focused on every day?”
With that, he launches into a “rattle through what we’ve done”, which includes setting up the national wealth fund and GB Energy, putting a new planning framework in place to encourage swifter construction of essential national infrastructure and more homebuilding, as well as starting recruitment of additional police officers and teachers.
“If you look at the list of what we have already done in 11 weeks, then I would argue strongly that we’ve done far more than the last government did probably in the last 11 years.”
He continues: “Leaking, I know how damaging it is. In the end, it only damages the government, so I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But I would also point out there’s a lot of work that’s gone on, being delivered through No 10 and the cabinet.”
Since he arrived there, he’s delivered a lot of words about the direness of the inheritance from the Tories and accompanied this with the warning that things are going to get worse before they get better. Can the Labour conference, which opens on Sunday in Liverpool, expect a further deluge of miserabilism or will he have some more optimistic things to say to his party and to the public? “I want to answer the ‘why’ question as well as the ‘what’ question. In the first 11 weeks, we have answered the ‘what’ question – what did we inherit? This £22bn black hole is a real problem … We’re going to have to deal with it upfront.”
If Labour is ultimately to deliver improved economic growth and everything else it has promised, it has “to do the tough things first” so “in years to come, people will look back and say: ‘That Labour government in 2024 really got to grips with it.’”
He embarks on one of his favoured metaphors, which is to compare his task to restoring a rotting building. “When you’re redecorating a house, you can be tempted to paint over the damp and the cracks, and people do. Landlords often do. But the damp comes back. The cracks are still there.” Better, he argues, to “strip it down” to do the job properly.
The criticism, which is to be widely heard among his colleagues, is that he has not painted an appealing picture of what it will be like living in the house once it has been refurbished. “We had to make it clear what the inheritance was. But, to accept your challenge, we do need to say why and explain and set out and describe the better Britain that this ladders up to.” He adds: “That is the central purpose of my conference speech, which is to answer that very question.”
There will be ructions at the conference from trades unions and party activists who oppose ending the universality of the winter fuel payment by restricting it to pensioners on pension credit. He continues to defend the government’s most contentious act so far. “We’ve got £22bn to find and there are no easy decisions when you’ve got £22bn to find… We couldn’t pretend it’s not there… That means really difficult decisions.”
He also suggests that there will be more of them to come. “It’s going to be tough” he says of Reeves’s budget at the end of October.
He has a potentially more reassuring message for those who fear that a Labour version of austerity is coming down the track which will entail deep cuts to public spending. “I’m acutely aware that our public services are on their knees. I ran a public service. I know what cuts feel like. And I know that a lot of them are cut to the bone.”
He has been heard to say in the past that the time he spent as an opposition MP were “the most futile” of his life. For all the battalions of troubles already assailing him, he’s clearly relishing holding the levers of power. Comparing government with opposition, he remarks: “It’s much tougher, but much better, if that makes sense. It’s tougher than being in opposition because you’ve got to make real decisions. But it’s better because you get to make real decisions.” Yes, that does make sense.
