100 days in power, now and then

After last week’s column musing about the difficulties of watching loved ones head into older age, I have been brought back into the everyday, and to the world of politics.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve not been paying as much attention as I normally would to the goings on in Westminster, but it seems a little surprising that we have already reached the first 100 days of the new Labour government.

I saw that Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer admitted there have been some “choppy” days since his administration came to power, and I am sure that many in the Cabinet, as well as Starmer himself, would have wished that the focus had remained on policy and their early achievements, rather than on who paid for whose clothes.

There have been some wins, of course, including going ahead with many of the plans the government committed to in its manifesto, such as shaking up the planning rules, nationalising the railways, giving workers many more rights, creating GB Energy, and binning one-word Ofsted judgements in England.

But obscuring all that, there has also been an ugly procession of claims that reinforce the belief of many that, rather than bringing a new brush to the political sphere after an increasingly grubby and tawdry set of third-rate Tory governments, this new lot are just like the last lot and are in it simply for themselves and what they can get.

It is sad, and strikes a marked contrast with the first 100 days of New Labour, led by Tony Blair. While I was a fan neither of Blair nor of his politics, having thought that his ideas had far more form than content, it was nevertheless a turning point in British history. I have said elsewhere on here that I was there at the Royal Festival Hall at dawn to see his first speech as Prime Minister, and I followed the new government’s progress with interest.

After the shaky and moribund Tory party’s last few years in power, New Labour were a breath of fresh air, and it was clear that, with Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Derry Irvine, Margaret Beckett, Alistair Darling, Alan Milburn, Robin Cook, Jack Straw, Harriet Harman, David Blunkett, Clare Short, and many others, alongside Alastair Campbell as head of communications, they had a team of heavyweights who would make a mark, even if it was difficult to see how they would all pull in the same direction.

The early scandal that rocked Blair’s government to the core involved Formula 1 motor racing and an exemption that it was given from a ban all sports sponsorship by tobacco companies. It later emerged that Bernie Ecclestone, then F1 chief, had donated £1 million to the Labour Party before the election, and of course the whole thing blew up in Blair’s face.

But that saga did not unfold November 1997 and, with the government having been elected with a landslide victory on May 1, the first 100 days were pretty much exactly what they wanted them to be: a focus on policy and delivery, and whether the new administration would realise its lofty ideals and make good on its ambitious promises.

As I say, I was not a supporter, but I saw, as did many at the time, that we were entering a new era, and one that would be recorded down the line as transformative for a country that was in the doldrums and had done much to damage relations with its closest neighbours. (Sound familiar?)

Consequently, I keenly read Blair’s 100 Days by the sadly departed Derek Draper, and lapped up his combination of insider gossip and political insight, feeling for once that the distance between me, a member of the public, and the individuals pulling the levers of power, who seemed much less stuffy than their predecessors, had collapsed to nothing and we could all see ourselves as part of the national conversation (no matter how much that turned out to be an illusion).

How different in all seems today. Yes, there are many parallels, politically speaking, between 1997 and 2024, both socially and politically, and Starmer was elected on a great hope for change.

But the difference here is that, while he rode a wave of hope generated by a willing public, the man himself did not offer any hope of his own, other than to not to screw it up.

History will judge him and his government on that, but what saddens me is their obvious belief that a politician seeking to lead a country should not present any big ideas because they can be shot down by a cynical press. That is, of course, patently self-defeating, not just for Starmer but politics as a whole.

It is worth remembering that the Tories had nothing left to offer. Rishi Sunak’s government were dead in the water. People were desperate for something or someone to latch onto, to lift their eyes from the unedifying mud fight that characterised his party and show them the sunny uplands to which we would all like to head.

Yes, it was important that Starmer point out to everyone that the country is in such a state that the going will be very rough for a good while yet, but most people are happy to accept those kinds of realities if they understand that what we are aiming for will be worth it in the long run.

But in the absence of any big concepts and bright hopes, the newspapers have been forced into paying undue attention to the everyday and on the individuals running Starmer’s government, ending any hope’s he might have entertained of a honeymoon period.

And as any long-time political observer will know, alongside any comic trying to analyse a joke, the more time you spend look at the world of politics, the more the ‘magic’ disappears and all you can see is the same old machinery running the show as for the last lot.

So, Starmer’s first 100 days have come and gone, and I do not sense a single iota of the excitement or curiosity that I thrilled to in 1997. Yes, I am older and have been around the block a few times, so to speak. Yes, I have a lot more on my plate than I did in 1997. And yes, it is harder to convey any mystique in this 24-hours, always-on media age.

But I would like to think that Starmer and his aides, with all that they had and still have in their favour, could try a little harder to inspire; to keep their snouts out of the trough, as history tells us that these things always come out in the end; and give us some big ideas and some hope cling on to while he and his colleagues pull the country up out of the mire (if indeed they can).

Starmer may be condemned to have whiff of sleaze and incompetence cling to him from his early gaffes and slip-ups, but we, the people, deserve better.