Keir Starmer’s legacy will be ‘managing to p*** off everyone’, ex-No 10 insider says

Prime ministers always end up caring about their legacy, in the end. It’s usually in the final months, weeks, or even days of a premiership that they make a push to leave a good lasting impression with big, bombshell announcements or career-defining legislation. There’s a whole term for this mode of operation: ‘legacy mode’.

Helen MacNamara, former deputy cabinet secretary and co-host of In The Room, can think of plenty of things that Keir Starmer would like to be remembered for. The most recent and obvious is the announcement of a social media ban for under-16s, which has been celebrated and criticised in equal measure.

There are other things, too: the Renter’s Rights Bill, and the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap. Starmer would do much better to make more of a fuss over the dramatic fall in migration, which he oversaw. He would love for more people to remember his increase of VAT for private schools and his rollout of free school breakfast clubs (“which we could not have heard more about,” Helen smirks).

Cleo Watson, ex-No 10 special adviser to Theresa May and fellow In The Room co-host, interjects: “Unfortunately, you don't get to choose what your legacies are. There are a couple of things that will follow him around forever.”

Things like the lack of action on welfare reform, Cleo says. And this failure has had other knock-on failures: the UK’s increased spending on benefits meant that defence has been left underfunded, leading to the shock resignation of defence secretary John Healey.

“He's managed to piss off farmers with inheritance tax. He's managed to piss off judges by scrapping some jury trials. He's managed to piss off veterans by dragging them into court,” Cleo argues on the lastest episode.

And then there’s the messy business of winter fuel allowance. “It hasn't actually changed,” Cleo explains, “but people remember that as the government coming for the people who are the most in need. It was a completely pointless row, and it’s caused him major, major damage. It still comes up on doorsteps and in focus groups, now.”

The ex-politicos also point out that the assisted dying bill caused even more division and debate, and while it was not something Starmer was personally involved in, it happened on his watch. “It’s his passive governing trademark. He’s just let it happen,” Helen says.

“Keir Starmer promised to ‘rewire the state’. There's been no rewiring as far as I can see. It all kinda comes to somebody around whom there was a lot of hope, there was a lot of promise, there was a lot of ‘things are gonna be different’.

“People probably pinned a lot of that hope on the abstract, and it wasn't really anything he said; it was what everybody thought might happen. But some of it is stuff he said, though, and he just hasn't delivered on those expectations. The reality is that Keir Starmer has not, in fact, helped to build trust or restore trust in politics.”

New episodes of In The Room drop every week. Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch on YouTube.