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It took eight months but Sir Keir Starmer may have finally found his voice as prime minister.
The Labour leader may be the first PM to have almost no honeymoon period following a massive election victory but to actually come out stronger for it.
The painful-to-listen-to speeches, the constant empty references to working people, and the interminable meaningless lists of first steps, missions, foundations and milestones, are becoming a fading memory as he at last focuses on what matters.
His speech to the parliamentary Labour party (PLP) last night was his third career-defining moment in a fortnight and came with an assuredness, courage and ruthlessness that had been completely missing in the early part of his government.
In turning on welfare payments in the way he has, Sir Keir has gone where no other Labour prime minister has dared to go. He has reclaimed the word labour to mean support for those in work rather than the old Tory derision that they were the party of benefits.
It is noticeable that even Tony Blair in his great reforming government was reluctant to do more than tinker with single parent benefits rather than tackle the entire welfare edifice. He asked Frank Field to “think the unthinkable” and, when Field did that, he lost his job along with his then boss Harriet Harman.
Sir Keir instead has looked at the problem. He has seen 2.8 million people of working age languishing on long term sickness and disability benefits. He has seen that this number will grow to 4 million by 2030 with a cost of £70 billion – almost double that of the defence budget. And he has made the cold, hard calculation that it is “unsustainable, indefensible and unfair”.
But he also knows the obstacles and reluctance within his own party to cut support for the poorest and most needy.
After all, they are still complaining about the reforms carried out by Tory former work and pensions secretary Sir Iain Duncan Smith which, coupled with George Osborne as chancellor, saw an attempt at reducing the welfare bill as well as trying to get people back to work.
Those reforms were effective but now the cost is significantly on the rise again.
Sir Keir has decided he needs to use his Commons majority to do the right thing rather than politically expedient thing in terms of internal Labour politics.
We also saw it when he took on another sacred cow for Labour, slashing international aid to fund increased defence.
These are the sorts of policies you might have expected from the Tories – except they were too afraid to do them.
The prime minister is helped by the fact that the vast majority of Labour MPs, particularly from the new intake, are relatively supine and hoping for career advancement. So there is little prospect of a significant rebellion.
Nevertheless, it took him eight months to understand that he could properly exert his power in this way. And his speech to the PLP showed a clarity and honesty to his MPs, which many believed had been absent before.
His parties in Wales and Scotland, both facing very difficult election challenges next year will probably not thank him as they take on leftwing nationalist rivals in Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party. But in the past few weeks, Sir Keir has behaved like a leader unafraid of doing what needs to be done.
We saw it first in the White House where he won the respect of Donald Trump and politely but firmly stood up to the free speech slurs of Vice President JD Vance. We saw it when he hugged President Volodymyr Zelensky in Downing Street two days later after the Ukrainian leader’s bust up with President Trump.
With France’s Emmanuel Macron in political trouble, Germany without an effective government, and America in the hands of the most volatile president in modern history, the west is looking for Sir Keir for leadership and currently he is not disappointing them.
Happily for him, he has found his zen just as his principal opponents, most notably Nigel Farage and Reform, are in a state of collapse and flux.
But if the prime minister we have seen in the last two weeks is what defines Sir Keir’s premiership rather than the lost and directionless politician we saw in the first eight months then Labour may turn out to be a party of government rather than one which almost accidentally found itself in power because of the failures of others.
Source: independent.co.uk
