Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has launched a scathing attack on Sir Keir Starmer’s first year as Prime Minister, accusing him of presiding over a “year of lies and U-turns” that has left Britain poorer and less secure.
Writing exclusively in the Mail to mark Saturday’s anniversary of Labour’s landslide election victory, Mrs Badenoch condemned the government’s record on everything from taxation to border control, warning that Sir Keir is now “in office but not in power” after capitulating to rebellious backbenchers.
The Tory leader’s intervention comes as polling reveals voters are now split evenly on whether they would prefer Labour or the Conservatives to have won the 2024 election, with Labour’s commanding lead evaporating amid economic turmoil and policy reversals.
Channel Crossings Surge Under Labour
Citing figures showing a 48 per cent rise in illegal Channel crossings, Mrs Badenoch delivered a withering assessment of the Prime Minister’s immigration record.
Starmer promised to smash the gangs and so far all he’s done is smash records for new arrivals,” she wrote, highlighting the government’s failure to stem the flow of small boats despite abandoning the Conservative Rwanda deportation scheme.
The criticism comes as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper faces mounting pressure over record numbers reaching British shores, with more than 35,000 migrants crossing the Channel since January according to recent reports.
Mrs Badenoch’s attack particularly stings given Labour’s pre-election promises to bring order to the asylum system through enhanced international cooperation and targeting criminal smuggling networks.
Tax Burden Hits Post-War High
The Conservative leader reserved particular fury for Labour’s economic management, noting that despite pledges not to raise taxes on working people, the tax burden has already reached its highest level since the Second World War.
Following Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s £40 billion tax raid in Labour’s first Budget, Mrs Badenoch warned that further increases now appear inevitable after what she called “farcical events” that have blown a bigger hole in public finances.
“Worryingly, the farcical events of the past week have blown an even bigger hole in the public finances,” she wrote. “Further tax rises in the autumn now look inevitable. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have shown themselves to be serially incompetent and it’s working families who are set to pay the price.
Authority Drains Away After U-Turns
Mrs Badenoch seized on the Prime Minister’s recent string of policy reversals, including on winter fuel payments, grooming gangs, and most recently welfare reform, where he abandoned plans to save billions from the benefits bill after a threatened rebellion by Labour MPs.
Echoing Norman Lamont’s famous 1993 verdict on John Major, she warned that Sir Keir is now “in office but not in power” after repeatedly backing down to avoid defeats.
Left-wing Labour MPs can now smell blood, and the Government’s authority has all but drained away,” the Tory leader wrote, highlighting how 126 Labour MPs initially rebelled against welfare reforms before the Prime Minister’s capitulation.
Voters Feel Betrayed by ‘Corbyn’s Labour’
According to Mrs Badenoch, swing voters who backed Labour expecting competent centrist governance have been left “absolutely aghast” at the reality of Starmer’s administration.
“They thought they would be getting Tony Blair’s Labour,” she wrote. Instead, they got Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour with Keir Starmer at the helm.
The assessment appears backed by polling data, with a YouGov survey finding that among working-class voters, people now say by a margin of 28:27 that they wish the Tories had won the election—a stunning reversal from Labour’s commanding victory just 12 months ago.
Prime Minister Defends Record
Despite the mounting criticism and plummeting poll ratings, Sir Keir remained defiant in an interview marking his first anniversary, insisting he was “as proud as hell” of Labour’s achievements in office.
Speaking to the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast, the Prime Minister highlighted what he called “fantastic things” including progress on NHS waiting lists and education initiatives like breakfast clubs and school uniform projects.
The Labour dressing room, the Parliamentary Labour Party, is proud as hell of what we’ve done,” he insisted, dismissing suggestions he had lost authority over his MPs.
Sir Keir defended his recent U-turns as “common sense” pragmatism rather than weakness, telling the interviewer: “I’m not one of these ideological thinkers… I’m a pragmatist.”
Local Election Losses Mount
The scale of Labour’s political troubles became clear in May’s local elections, where the party lost two-thirds of the seats it was defending and surrendered the previously safe seat of Runcorn and Helsby to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in a by-election.
Official growth forecasts for this year have been halved since Labour took office, while the Prime Minister’s personal approval ratings have sunk to record lows, with recent polling showing a net favorability rating of -34.
Even Labour peer Maurice Glasman, founder of the influential Blue Labour group and close to Sir Keir’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, warned the Prime Minister had become a “tragic figure” who would need to make “very significant” changes to turn around the party’s fortunes.
Anniversary Without Celebration
Downing Street confirmed the Prime Minister spent Friday working in No 10 with no plans to celebrate the anniversary, a stark contrast to the triumphant scenes outside Downing Street a year ago when he promised to “end the era of noisy performance” and unite the country.
Sir Keir had pledged on that July morning to put “country first, party second” and show that “politics can be a force for good.” Yet 12 months later, his government faces accusations of putting party unity ahead of difficult decisions on welfare reform and other contentious issues.
The Prime Minister maintained that achievements including “loads of improvements in schools” and securing “a huge amount of investment into the country” demonstrated Labour’s positive impact, while also citing three trade deals as evidence of progress.
Opposition Momentum Builds
Mrs Badenoch’s attack represents her most comprehensive critique of the Labour government to date, positioning the Conservatives as ready to capitalize on the government’s struggles despite their own historic defeat just a year ago.
While the Tory leader herself faces challenges—with her net favorability rating of -34 matching Starmer’s—she has maintained strong support among Conservative voters and increasingly appears to be setting the political agenda.
The intervention comes as Reform UK continues to gain ground, winning its first parliamentary seat in the Runcorn by-election and with leader Nigel Farage recording improving favorability ratings that now exceed both Starmer and Badenoch.
As Labour marks its first anniversary in power, the political landscape appears dramatically different from the commanding position the party enjoyed just 12 months ago, with Mrs Badenoch’s verdict that voters got “Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour” instead of the centrist competence they expected resonating with an increasingly disillusioned electorate.
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Image credit:
Prime Minister’s Questions, 6 November 2024. Photo by UK Parliament / Jessica Taylor, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 3.0.
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