POLITICO lists 27 (and counting) key walkbacks in Starmer’s spell as opposition leader.
AI generated Text-to-speech
As of 2023, Labour policy was instead to “fundamentally reform” the system.
Starmer’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jon Ashworth said his party “actually agree[s] with the concept behind Universal Credit.”
Back in the 2020 leadership contest, Starmer ran as a bit of a leftie, suggesting he’d continue the work of ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn. He even described him as a “friend.”
It would all get a little bit high school a few years down the line, however.
As well as eventually barring Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate — over his views on antisemitism in the party — Starmer even U-turned on the tenor of their relationship, denying in an LBC interview that he and Corbyn had ever been mates.
One of the key planks of Corbyn’s platform as leader was his pledge to abolish university tuition fees. Starmer inherited and reiterated this pledge when he ran for leader.
Starmer pledged in his leadership campaign — where he said a lot of things, as you may have noticed — to abolish the U.K.’s unelected second chamber, the House of Lords. He has repeatedly reaffirmed this pledge, including as recently as November 2022.
Some wondered about this commitment when Starmer’s spokesperson in June last year indicated the Labour leader may in fact appoint new peers to the chamber.
They were right to wonder. Labour’s Shadow Leader of the House Thangam Debbonaire confirmed last year that the plans to abolish the Lords are likely to take a back seat as constitutional change “takes time and it drains energy,” while more recent reports indicate the plan is, at the very least, delayed.
Reeves announced a digital services tax plan in 2021. It would have seen Labour increase the 2 percent levy charged on the revenues of tech firms operating in the U.K. — think the likes of Amazon and Facebook — to 10 percent. The shadow chancellor restated her commitment to the policy in September 2022.
But some business figures expressed concerns about the plan, fearing retaliatory sanctions from the U.S.
In response to a June 2023 Times story, a Labour spokesperson confirmed the party now had “no plans to raise [the] digital services tax” — and argued Reeves’ previous position applied only to the years 2022/23 and 2023/24 … rather than any years the party could have possibly been in government.
In the run-up to the implementation of the scheme later last year, Starmer still wouldn’t say if he was backing Khan’s timetable either.
“Heinous,” “inhuman” and “obscene.” Labour’s top team is no fan of the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap, which prevents British parents from claiming welfare benefits for more than two children. Keir Starmer too had promised to scrap the policy when he ran for leader.
But fast forward to July 2023 and Starmer’s new position was that a Labour government is “not changing that policy.” As is the norm these days, an internal row greeted his words.
Starmer’s been trying to walk a fine line on Britain’s gender recognition laws — and the Conservatives are keen to exploit what they see as vacillation.
The Labour leader previously promised to scrap the current need for a transgender person to obtain a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria before being eligible to legally change their sex.
But, in a significant shift unveiled in summer 2023, the party’s equalities minister Anneliese Dodds committed only to “modernising the Gender Recognition Act,” with a focus on removing “invasive bureaucracy.”
The party has argued it would still scrub other tax perks afforded to the U.K.’s private schools, but that formally removing charitable status would be complicated and open to legal challenge.
Nevertheless, the move is being seen on the left of the party as another U-turn.
Starmer’s first shadow environment team had committed to a Scotland-style “right to roam” policy in England — which would have given the good folk of England an assumed right to walk where they please around the countryside.
But a Starmer spokesperson told the Guardian the party had “never committed to a Scottish-style right to roam.” Which isn’t quite right.
As conflict escalated in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel, the Labour leadership initially defied those who urged Starmer to call for an immediate cease-fire.
The Labour leader even suggested, in an LBC interview, that Israel “does have” the “right” to cut off power and water in Gaza — comments which were greeted with fury. A Labour spokesperson tried to downplay it.
When Starmer was running for the Labour leadership in 2020, he pledged to introduce a law that would ensure U.K. governments have to get the consent of the House of Commons before any military interventions.
But in January the Labour leader publicly backed the government’s air strikes on the Houthi rebels in Yemen — carried out in conjunction with the U.S. The strikes were authorized by Sunak without parliament having any say.
Starmer has argued he stands by the principle of putting any planned military action to parliament, and that there is a difference between air strikes and boots-on-the-ground interventions. But the Labour left aren’t convinced.
Starmer also promised during that 2020 leadership contest to “stop” the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, which he said was “creating the horrifying humanitarian suffering in Yemen.” He sounded a bit less certain in January.
“We will review the situation and the review will give us the answers to those questions,” Starmer offered when grilled by the BBC about sales to the Saudis in particular.
Senior Labour figures joined in with the chorus of criticism that met the government’s decision to remove the cap on bonuses earned by city-slickers. That included figures as senior as Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who said ditching the bankers’ bonus cap “tells you everything you need to know about this government.”