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Keir Starmer And Rachel Reeves Could Be Preparing For Their Biggest U-Turn Yet. Here’s Why

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Rachel Reeves could not have been clearer as she delivered her first Budget last October.

The chancellor told MPs that she had considered whether or not to maintain the freeze on income tax and National Insurance thresholds, which were brought in by the Tories and are due to stay in place until 2029.

The effect of the policy is to drag millions of workers into higher tax bands when their pay goes up, raising tens of billions of pounds for the Treasury in the process.

But critics say this is a stealth tax, a sneaky way of giving the chancellor more money to spend without having to increase the rate of income tax or National Insurance.

Delivering her Budget, Reeves told the Commons that under Labour, this practice would end.

“Extending their threshold freeze for a further two years raises billions of pounds,” she said.

“Money to deal with the black hole in our public finances, and repair our public services.

“Having considered this issue closely, I have come to the conclusion that extending the threshold freeze would hurt working people. It would take money out of their payslips.

“I am keeping every single promise on tax that I made in our manifesto. So there will be no extension of the freeze in income tax and National Insurance thresholds beyond the decisions of the previous government.

“From 2028/29, personal tax thresholds will be uprated in line with inflation once again.”

But with the chancellor struggling to balance the nation’s books, all the signs are that she is set to recant on her previous position when she delivers her next Budget in the autumn.

At prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch asked Keir Starmer if he stood by Labour’s election manifesto pledge not to put up income tax, VAT or National Insurance.

The PM delivered a one word answer: “Yes.”

But when Badenoch asked the prime minister if Reeves stood by her promise to lift the freeze on income tax thresholds, he was much more equivocal.

“We are absolutely fixed on our fiscal rules, we remain committed to them,” Starmer said, completely dodging the question.

“We remain committed to our Budget, to our manifesto commitments.”

Badenoch replied: “The whole House would have heard him fail to rule out freezing tax thresholds. He could say with the first question, he could promise, but he couldn’t this time round.”

She said maintaining the freeze meant “millions of our poorest pensioners face being dragged into income tax for the first time ever”.

Once again, Starmer failed to rule out maintaining the Tory threshold freeze, saying once again: “We will stick to our manifesto commitments, we will stick to our fiscal rules.”

Speaking to journalists afterwards, the prime minister’s spokesman repeatedly refused to say whether Reeves stands by her commitment to end the freeze.

Of course, performing an embarrassing U-turn would not be a new experience for the PM, who has turned it into something of an art form thanks to climbdowns on, among other things, winter fuel payments and welfare cuts – decisions which have left Reeves needing to urgently raise more funds.

Voters tend to be forgiving of politicians who actually change their minds when the tide turns against them.

But they may be less patient when the U-turn in question ends up hitting them in the pocket.

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Another Blow For Starmer As Two-Thirds Of Brits Say PM No Longer Respects Them, Poll Finds

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Two-thirds of Brits believe Keir Starmer does not respect people like them, according to a new poll.

Researchers at More in Common and UCL Policy Lab found 63% of the 7,000 people polled in June say the prime minister does not respect them now, compared to 32% a year ago.

Only a quarter (24%) of respondents said they still believe he does respect them.

Meanwhile, 65% of voters say the Labour Party as a whole lacks respect for them – double the amount who said that in 2024.

The results are yet another blow to the prime minister, who has just marked a year in office, but has very little to celebrate.

Last week, he was forced to water down his welfare reforms to prevent his own backbenchers from voting them down, although 48 Labour MPs still rebelled.

The decision also blew a £5 billion hole in chancellor Rachel Reeves’ autumn Budget, leaving more tax rises all-but inevitable.

So it’s no surprise that Brits told More in Common and UCL Policy Lab they would give the party an E on their report card after a year in office.

Most voters said nothing had changed in the year since the last Tory government was kicked out of office.

Only three in five Labour voters from last year would still support the party now, the researchers found.

Former Labour supporters are now heading to other parties – 11% to Reform, 8% to the Lib Dems, 4% to the Greens and 4% to the Conservatives.

More than a third of those disillusioned voters (36%) said they were moving away from Labour due to broken promises and U-turns.

A further 31% blamed the government’s inability to reduce the cost of living, and 27% cited the changes to the winter fuel allowance.

Other top reasons included a lack of control over immigration, improving the NHS and changes to the benefit system.

But, despite believing he does not respect them, only 13% said they would not vote for Labour because they don’t like Starmer, the same proportion who said the party is now too right-wing.

Meanwhile, the poll found Reform UK’s Nigel Farage is now seen as the most respectful political leader.

A third (33%) said the MP for Clacton respects people like them, compared to 24% who felt the same about either Starmer or Tory leader Kemi Badenoch.

Half (50%) of Brits said Farage felt the opposite – but that’s still significantly lower than those who feel the same about Starmer (63%) or Badenoch (56%).

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Panel Of 2024 Labour Voters Name The 1 Turning Point They Began To Like Farage

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A panel of 2024 Labour voters said they started to like Reform UK after watching its leader Nigel Farage on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!.

Back in late 2023 before he was elected to parliament, Farage caused a huge stir by appearing in the hit reality TV show.

Even the programme’s hosts Ant and Dec urged producers to take a break from having politicians as contestants.

But, Farage still won over voters and ended up in third place.

More than 18 months later, a panel of voters who backed Labour last July told pollsters that his appearance on the show marked the moment they started warming up to the MP for Clacton.

In footage aired by the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, one voter told pollsters More in Common: “I really like Reform.

“I didn’t [like him], but it was I’m A Celeb… which turned my head for Nigel.

“I really saw a different side to him and I think he’s very misunderstood.”

“He’s more relatable to people, to the average person,” another woman said. “Whereas some politicians at the present seem far removed, they’re so in another world, because they are public school educated, they can’t relate to the average person.”

However, a different person did jump in at this point, saying: “Nigel Farage was publicly educated, while Keir Starmer is working class but he does present that.

“So Nigel Farage puts on this image of being one of the people, but actually he went to private school.”

Even so, some voters suggested they would fire Starmer for his “disappointing” performance over the last year unless he starts to “try harder”.

Good Morning Britain host Susanna Reid also told the BBC that this conversation demonstrated how voters “need to feel a material difference in their lives”.

She noted that they are still struggling with food inflation and cost of living, so the “government are getting this wrong”.

“Perhaps Sir Keir Starmer needs to go on I’m A Celebrity… or Strictly, in order for voters to know who he is,” Reid suggested. “The words that kept coming out of their mouths were: I don’t know who he is.”

The focus group’s findings were published to mark the anniversary of Labour’s landslide victory in the general election as political pundits look at how Starmer has fallen down in the polls ever since.

Sky News had its own devastating way of portraying Labour’s first year in office with some brutal word clouds, again from More in Common.

The pollsters asked the public: “In a word or two, what would you say has been Labour’s biggest achievement in government?”

The largest word by a healthy margin was “nothing”, although – in much smaller fonts – NHS, welfare, winter, election and Ukraine were all visible too.

A More in Common word cloud shown on Sky News
A More in Common word cloud shown on Sky News
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‘It’s A Shitshow’: After A Year Of Mistakes And U-Turns, Can Keir Starmer Turn It Around?

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Sometimes a moment can capture the political mood better than any speech or parliamentary vote.

Leaving 10 Downing Street en route to his ministerial car before prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, a walk of only a few steps which he has made hundreds of times in the past year, Keir Starmer stumbled.

As his right leg began to give way, the prime minister instinctively reached out to grab the nearest railing to steady himself.

In the grand scheme of things it was a minor mishap. No harm done, let’s just move on.

But for a PM under pressure and whose very political existence is now the subject of open speculation at Westminster, it wasn’t a great look.

If he can’t even leave the house without nearly falling flat on his face, you could hear his critics thinking, how on earth can he run the country?

Underlining how difficult things are right now for Starmer, worse was to follow less than an hour later, as he ploughed his way through PMQs seemingly unaware that his chancellor was in tears beside him.

We may never know the real reason for Rachel Reeves’ distress, but the message it seemed to convey to the country was unmistakeable: just a year on from Labour’s landslide election victory, this is a government which already seems to be emotionally and politically spent.

“They haven’t got a narrative and the whole thing’s a mess.”

The previous evening, the PM had been forced to make yet another U-turn in order to ensure the government’s flagship Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments Bill was passed at second reading.

The fact that it no longer contains anything at all on personal independence payments demonstrates how much Starmer had to give away to win the support of enough of his rebellious MPs.

The climbdown meant that the £5 billion of savings the welfare reforms were supposed to deliver have now disappeared, leaving the chancellor to plan yet more tax rises to fill the gap.

As a backdrop to Starmer’s first anniversary in the job, it was far from ideal.

“They’ve got a huge majority, but they haven’t got a narrative and the whole thing’s a mess,” said one gloomy Labour veteran.

“I was talking to a senior businessman who said on the day-to-day stuff, the government is actually getting a lot of things right. But fundamentally it’s a shitshow.

“This weekend we should be celebrating the first anniversary of a famous victory, which was an outstanding achievement, but instead we’ve gone straight to the massive hangover.”

Starmer felt compelled to warn his cabinet this week about briefing against Morgan McSweeney, the PM’s chief of staff who has become a lightning rod for criticism of the No.10 operation.

Reeves’s strict adherence to her fiscal rules, which are aimed at keeping a tight rein on government spending, has also been blamed for the government’s woes.

Labour MPs feel worn down by having to defend unpopular government decisions like removing winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners, only for the PM to eventually U-turn on them when the political heat gets too much.

One senior Labour figure told HuffPost UK that Starmer has it in his gift to lift the gloom, but he doesn’t have any time to waste.

“They’ve got three years to recover,” he said. “It’s perfectly doable, but they need to be getting back on track very quickly. Luckily, the Tories are still all over the place. Reform are obviously a problem, but it is a recoverable situation.

“Basically, Keir needs to get a grip. He has to shake things up and some people’s egos will get bruised in the process, but in the end we’ve got to move on.

“Does he want to be remembered as the man who re-established the party and set us on a forward path or does he want to be remembered as the man who blew it?”

“Keir needs to get a grip. He has to shake things up.”

One Labour MP said the government needs to get on and deliver the change that the country voted for a year ago.

“There has to be an improvement in living standards,” he said. “If we don’t make people feel better off, then we will suffer at the next election.”

The MP warned that Nigel Farage will be the main beneficiary if Starmer doesn’t get his and the government’s act together soon.

He said: “Nobody said it was going to be easy. There’s no political patience out there. People feel worn down and want to see improvements tomorrow, and if they don’t then they’ll vote for Reform.”

There is anger inside No.10 towards the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), who many believe are either unable or unwilling to accept the parlous state of the public finances means tough decisions need to be made.

In the wake of the welfare reform fiasco, one MP was even overheard saying: “I don’t understand why this means tax rises when it’s only a few billion pounds.”

Flushed with the success of forcing the PM to U-turn on welfare cuts, some rebels made it clear they will now try to force him to scrap the two-child benefit cap – a move that would come with a £3.5bn price tag.

That prompted one No.10 insider to observe: “They are aware they’ve just spent that money, right?”

A cabinet minister told HuffPost UK it was time for some Labour backbenchers to come into the real world.

“You can’t have a situation where MPs club together and force a decision that costs £5bn and then dump all the consequences on the chancellor,” he said.

“If these things are collectively decided, they need to be collectively owned. The PLP can’t think this is a free lunch, that we’ll move on next to something like the two-child benefit cap and say the chancellor will have to deal with that. It’s been very unfair to load all that on her.

“Labour MPs think somehow somebody else will deal with it, that you can tax more or borrow more and it’ll all be fine. But when you tax private schools, farmers, businesses, there’s always a big pushback. There isn’t a free little lever that you can just pull.”

rime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves
rime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves

via Associated Press

French president Emmanuel Macron is in London next week to address parliament and hold talks with Starmer on how France can work with the UK to stop asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats.

Bringing down immigration was a key Labour pledge in the election, and yet the number of asylum seekers making the perilous journey is at a record high.

Party strategists believe fulfilling that promise is essential if the government is to show voters that it is delivering.

But Chris Hopkins, political research director at pollsters Savanta, said it may already be too late for Starmer.

“I’m not sure he can turn things around,” he said. “It’s too early to completely write them off – we’ve seen far stranger things than a Labour comeback – but public opinion is far easier to lose than win back and the prospects for this government don’t look good.

“They lack the policy agenda to capture voters’ imagination, they lack the fiscal headroom to bring about tangible changes to people’s lives, and they’re not proving themselves to be united, competent or strong either.

“It’s no surprise at this stage that so many 2024 Labour voters have buyer’s remorse, and when the Tories and Labour fail, the untested alternatives suddenly look significantly less risky for an increasingly promiscuous electorate.

“Labour’s electoral coalition was always going to be difficult to hold together, but I think the speed and scale of the collapse from such a strong position is a surprise, and exactly what the country didn’t need from its next government.”

Starmer will spend his anniversary weekend away from Downing Street, and his allies insist he will not be brooding on the turmoil of recent days.

“He’s not someone that sits and dwells on things,” said on senior government official. “There are obviously lessons to be learned, but he’s focused on what we can do to fix things rather than spend all his time chewing over the past week.”

Labour’s first 12 months in office have been marked by a series of self-inflicted errors, gaffes, controversies and climbdowns.

The next election may not be until 2029, but Starmer and those around him know that he cannot afford for the next year to be as bad as the last one.

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The Jokes Write Themselves As Clip Of Starmer Stumbling Before PMQs Emerges

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Keir Starmer’s critics are having a field day online after a clip emerged of the prime minister tripping up outside the steps of No.10 today.

The footage, shared by Sky News’ Serena Barker-Singh, shows the PM stumbling across the pavement as he walks out of the front door of 10 Downing Street, and reaching for the railings to steady himself on the way to the car.

It is only a six-second clip of Starmer heading out on his usual ride to the Commons for prime minister’s questions, but the timing of the footage is deeply unfortunate for the PM.

It comes amid the greatest crisis his premiership has faced yet.

On Tuesday, his government was forced into a last-minute U-turn over welfare reforms to avoid a humiliating defeat in the Commons.

Scores of Labour rebels were threatening to vote down the government bill even after the PM had already watered the original proposals down.

His second set of concessions meant the proposals were voted through – but Starmer has clearly lost his authority over his own party in the process.

It also means his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will have to fill a £5billion black hole in the public finances.

So many people on social media saw Starmer’s fall as a metaphor for the many crises the top of government is facing right now…

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Remember when everyone was laughing at Rishi Sunak being drenched in the rain whilst announcing the general election…

We’ve reached that.

But quicker. https://t.co/Qm2hEddqWD

— Puja Teli (@ThePujaTeli) July 2, 2025

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Remember when everyone was laughing at Rishi Sunak being drenched in the rain whilst announcing the general election…

We’ve reached that.

But quicker. https://t.co/Qm2hEddqWD

— Puja Teli (@ThePujaTeli) July 2, 2025

Starmer was not the only Labour frontbencher to go viral for all the wrong reasons today, either.

His chancellor Rachel Reeves appeared to be crying in the Commons today during PMQs after Tory leader Kemi Badenoch asked whether Starmer if her job was safe.

The PM dodged the question, although a spokeswoman for Starmer later said: “The chancellor is going nowhere. She has the prime minister’s full backing.”

When asked about Reeves’ display of emotions during PMQs, a spokesperson told HuffPost UK: “It’s a personal matter, which – as you would expect – we are not going to get into.

“The chancellor will be working out of Downing Street this afternoon.”

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