There’s nothing new in governments suffering “mid-term blues”. It happens often. Halfway through a term in office – especially in their first term – a leader or a political party seems unable to connect with voters and fails to fulfil the hopes and promises that allowed them to be elected in the first place.
It happened to Margaret Thatcher. She was first elected UK prime minister in 1979, and her popularity quickly plummeted. She was rescued by winning the Falklands War in 1982 and became one of the most consequential prime ministers of the 20th century.
It happened to Bill Clinton, too. He was first elected US president in 1992 but within two years was faced with a hostile “Republican Revolution” – a landslide victory for his opponents in Congressional elections in 1994. Fearing he would be a one-term president, Mr Clinton changed course. In his January 1996 State of the Union address, he promised that “the era of big government is over”, aligning himself with the “small government” ideology of his Republican opponents. Mr Clinton won re-election handsomely in November 1996.
Now it is the turn of Keir Starmer in Britain. He rode to a landslide victory last year only to see support eroding on all fronts this year. The most recent of Mr Starmer’s many woes came in Wales last week in the once-solidly Labour area of Caerphilly. In a byelection for the Senedd, as the Welsh Parliament is called, Mr Starmer’s Labour party lost a traditionally ultra-safe seat to the Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru.
It could have been worse. Labour could have lost to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which leads opinion polls across the country but managed to come only second in Caerphilly. Even so, Labour coming third is astonishing. It is one of those constituencies in which activists joked that for a century their party was so popular that Labour votes were not counted but weighed.
Whatever the day-to-day problems of being Prime Minister in London, Mr Starmer and his team must be alarmed that the Welsh byelection signals that his party potentially faces a triple crisis next year. In May, there are local government elections in England as well as parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales all at the same time. Mr Starmer’s Labour could lose to Reform in England, to Plaid Cymru in Wales and to the Scottish National Party in Scotland.
The SNP is preparing to argue that if it once again gets control of the Scottish Parliament, it will be a mandate for another referendum on Scottish independence. Mr Starmer therefore knows that his own position as Prime Minister, which looked so secure a year ago, is now under threat.
Next month, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves will unveil a budget that undoubtedly will be full of hard choices. She can raise taxes or cut spending, neither of which is likely to be popular. Perhaps the only bright spot for Mr Starmer is that the leader of the opposition, the Conservative party’s Kemi Badenoch, is even less popular than he is. Ms Badenoch’s lacklustre leadership means her party is itself facing an even worse fate in May elections.
So what can Mr Starmer do? He says he is “deeply disappointed” by the Caerphilly result. He should be. He has all the main levers of powers at Westminster and yet he himself seems to have “deeply disappointed” Labour voters and his own Labour MPs.
There are, however, two possible models for recovery – that of a Thatcher or a Clinton. Mrs Thatcher, when in trouble, tended to persist with her policy options. She not only led the successful Falklands War campaign, but she also rigorously reshaped the British economy and emerged as “the Iron Lady”.
Mr Clinton seemed to pursue the opposite strategy, emphasising he was a “New Democrat”, capturing the centre ground and constantly emphasising his “era of big government is over” mantra. It worked for Mr Clinton in part because the American economy boomed in the mid-to-late 1990s and voters remained happy with the then-president’s broad sense of political direction.
The language coming from Downing Street on immigration and other matters suggests Mr Starmer may be moving in the Clinton centrist direction to try to see off the threat of Reform. But that could fuel discontent within Labour’s left wing. Critics suggest Mr Starmer does not need a new strategy but almost a new personality. He is a clever lawyer but a dull communicator and there is no available charisma transplant.
In the eternal political struggle between competence and charisma, voters seem to think Mr Starmer is so far failing in both. Available to him, however, is the power of the office of the Prime Minister and what the late American president Theodore Roosevelt called “the bully pulpit”.
A prime minister is Britain’s ultimate newsmaker. The “pulpit” means he has a platform to explain more about who he is, and where his leadership is going to take the UK in difficult times. He needs to communicate a clear vision of what his leadership will mean to the public. But for all Mr Starmer’s talents, communicating a clear vision is, so far, a skill that he appears to lack.
