Starmer’s 18-month slide: From landslide to crisis as Mandelson fallout empties No. 10
Keir Starmer marched Labour back into Downing Street in July 2024 with a commanding majority and a promise of sober, competent government. Eighteen months later, the prime minister is fighting for authority after his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and communications chief, Tim Allan, resigned in the wake of a deepening Peter Mandelson scandal. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar urged him to quit, saying the “distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street needs to change.” The chancellor continues to back Starmer. How did a project built on discipline and credibility get here so quickly?
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This is an analysis of the forces and decisions that reshaped Starmer’s premiership, from legislative rebellions and ethics rows to foreign policy gambles and domestic U-turns — a portrait of momentum lost and control contested.
The promise, then the strain
Starmer became prime minister on July 5, 2024, as Labour secured more than 400 seats. Less than three weeks later, seven Labour MPs were suspended for backing a Scottish National Party motion to abolish the welfare limit — a defiance tied to the government’s first King’s Speech. The swift discipline showed mettle; it also foreshadowed the recurring tug-of-war between a vast parliamentary majority and a fractious party base.
That summer, rioting erupted nationwide after the killing of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, a convulsion that tested policing, social cohesion and the new government’s crisis management. By early autumn, a separate row over ministers accepting clothing and other gifts from wealthy donors forced Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves to stop taking such donations. No. 10 revised the rules on ministerial gifts and hospitality, but the episode dented the “clean hands” image central to Labour’s brand.
On Oct. 7, Downing Street’s chief of staff Sue Gray quit after weeks of stories about infighting and her salary. The departure of the former “partygate” report author — hired to symbolize probity — became the year’s first big personnel blow.
The tax-and-tradeoffs phase
In her first autumn budget on Oct. 30, Reeves announced £40 billion a year in extra taxes, plans to raise employers’ national insurance contributions and to reduce inheritance tax relief for farmers. The message: stabilise first, grow later. A month on, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh resigned after pleading guilty in connection with incorrectly telling police in 2013 that a work phone had been stolen — an old case rebounding into a new government.
December brought a consequential choice: Labour grandee Peter Mandelson was appointed ambassador to Washington. The move looked like a high-wattage bet on influence in a Washington transformed by Donald Trump’s looming return.
Washington, Trump — and the risks of proximity
Trump entered the White House in January 2025. Elon Musk, an adviser to the president, quickly sparred with the UK government online over grooming gangs. On Feb. 25, Starmer committed to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, with a view to 3% in the next parliament — a pivot that would be partly funded by aid cuts. The next day, Starmer met Trump at the White House and invited him for a second state visit. On Feb. 28, International Development Minister Anneliese Dodds resigned over the aid reductions.
Amid a tempestuous Trump exchange, Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in London for a Lancaster House summit. Starmer led European efforts to shape a peacekeeping force that might deter Russia if a Ukraine cease-fire were reached — a sign he sought strategic heft as well as transactional ties with Washington.
April brought emergency legislation to take control of British Steel from its Chinese owner to preserve virgin steel-making in the UK. Even as Labour made that industry-saving call, Trump’s tariff threats hung over steel exports. A transatlantic deal on June 17 removed the threat to British cars and planes; steel remained unresolved.
In January 2026, Trump’s wish to annex Greenland strained relations with Europe. He ultimately dropped his tariff threats, but Green Party leader Zack Polanski accused Starmer of being “completely subservient” to the U.S. president — an attack that stuck to the prime minister’s close-coupling strategy with Washington.
Domestic frictions, political firestorms
The May 1, 2025, local elections were bruising. Labour underperformed and Reform UK surged, including in Runcorn and Helsby — a by-election triggered by the resignation of Labour MP Mike Amesbury after a conviction for punching a constituent. Eleven days later, Starmer delivered a speech on immigration that warned Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers.” He later said he regretted the phrase after comparisons to Enoch Powell — the sort of cultural misstep that drains political capital fast.
There were wins: a May 19 post-Brexit “reset” with the European Union on defence, food and passport checks, and a May 22 deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. But a May 21 partial U-turn on winter fuel payments to extend support to pensioners with incomes up to £35,000 — at a cost of about £1.25 billion — signalled how fiscal discipline collided with political pressure.
June underscored the pattern. Reeves’ spending review capped the first phase of economic triage. Starmer, after months of resistance, agreed to a statutory inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal. On welfare reform, more than 100 Labour MPs signed an amendment forcing concessions on June 27; by July 1, 49 Labour MPs rebelled against the government’s revised plan, the biggest revolt of the premiership.
Integrity and accountability — then the Mandelson rupture
September delivered a one-two political punch. Angela Rayner resigned as deputy prime minister and deputy Labour leader over underpaid tax on a Hove flat, triggering a reshuffle. Days later, Starmer sacked Mandelson as U.S. ambassador after email exchanges surfaced linking him to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The party conference was consumed by reports that Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham was eyeing a leadership bid.
Reeves’ second budget on Nov. 26 scrapped the two-child benefit cap, abandoned a planned income tax rise and extended freezes to thresholds — meaning millions faced being dragged into higher bands. A Dec. 23 climbdown raised farmers’ inheritance tax relief from £1 million to £2.5 million, unwinding part of the first budget’s squeeze.
January 2026 began with another reversal: the government rowed back on a flagship plan for mandatory digital ID checks to prove right-to-work status. On Jan. 22, Labour MP Andrew Gwynne resigned on health grounds, setting up a Feb. 26 by-election many thought could return Burnham to Parliament — before he was denied permission to stand for the party.
Then, in February, the so-called Epstein files suggested Mandelson had leaked market-sensitive information while a government minister. Starmer said he was “sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him” to Washington and that “none of us knew the depth of the darkness” of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein. The apology reignited questions about Starmer’s judgment and the system around prime ministerial appointments.
The breaking point
On Feb. 8, 2026, Morgan McSweeney quit as chief of staff. Twenty-four hours later, communications chief Tim Allan resigned. Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, called for Starmer to step down, even as the chancellor stood by him. For a leader who ran on stability, the optics were stark: two pillars of No. 10 gone; the party’s Scottish standard-bearer breaking ranks; a by-election days away.
What it adds up to
Starmer’s first 18 months are a study in governing under strain. The big majority bred expectation and impatience. Early ethics rows and personnel churn put dents in the promise of clean, clockwork administration. Economic choices — £40 billion a year in extra taxes, then partial retreat; benefits reform pressed, then pared back; reliefs tightened, then loosened — left Labour looking pragmatic but reactive. Foreign policy brought high-wire dividends and risk: a reset with Brussels, a strategic posture on Ukraine, and a transactional courtship of Trump that paid off on autos and aviation tariffs but fed a narrative of over-deference.
The Mandelson affair is the accelerant. His Washington appointment, sacking and the later documentary trail linking him to Epstein and alleged market leaks turned a personnel bet into a credibility crisis. McSweeney and Allan’s exits made it structural — a signal that No. 10’s political operation, not just its personnel, has been shaken.
What comes next
Starmer still has time and numbers. But authority is a wasting asset. The immediate tests are brutal and basic: fill the vacuum in No. 10 with figures who can reimpose discipline; stop the bleeding on policy U-turns; and give his MPs a story bigger than firefighting. The Feb. 26 by-election will be read as a referendum on competence as much as policy. If Andy Burnham’s ambitions re-emerge and internal critics keep breaking cover, the threat is less a formal challenge than a drip of defections, rebellions and resignations that erode the majority’s meaning.
In July 2024, Starmer promised method over melodrama. The next few weeks will show whether he can still deliver it — or whether the past 18 months were the high point of a project now defined by the crises it tried to contain.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
