Keir Starmer’s first 100 days will soon be forgotten – what matters is what happens next

Tony Blair tried to warn Keir Starmer. He said in a radio interview before the 1997 election that he would not have “some grand programme – in the first 100 days, you do these 30 or 40 things. I think that type of politics usually does end in tears.”

Yet Blair, too, fell victim to the temptation to overclaim and to set himself unrealistic deadlines. He was much mocked for presenting an “annual report” of the government’s first year, in a big press conference in the Downing Street garden in the summer of 1998 – which was notably thin on actual achievements.

And Blair’s first 100 days were bumpier than most people remember. There was a fuss about Derry Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, ordering wallpaper costing £59,000 to redecorate his state apartment in the House of Lords. There were complaints about the terms on which the UK handed over Hong Kong to China on the expiry of its lease at the end of June 1997. Just before the 100 days were up, Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, ended his marriage when he was told at Heathrow airport, with his wife, that his affair with Gaynor Regan was about to be reported.

None of that mattered much in the long-run, just as most of Starmer’s embarrassments will soon be forgotten. The big difference between then and now, though, is that Blair was freakishly popular, and remained so, while Starmer is not and is becoming less so. That in turn reflected not just their different characters but the nature of their inheritances.

Blair inherited a growing economy and a government whose finances were in such good shape that within three years there was more money coming in than going out. In such a context, the hope of improving public services seemed realistic. The outlook is much bleaker now, and although the voters are glad to see the back of the Conservatives, there is no great enthusiasm for an alternative that promises only “tough choices” and “painful” decisions in the Budget.

It was a mistake of Starmer’s to encourage journalists to write about the first 100 days. We would have done it anyway, but a more ruthless media operation might have tried to distract us. Instead, the “first 100 days” has been talked up by Labour as evidence of the seriousness of its preparation for government and the urgency of its missions.

Thus we had an employment rights bill on Thursday, published in order to meet that deadline, but still full of square brackets, metaphorically – some of the most important things in it, such as the length of the probation period for new employees, are not to be decided until the autumn of 2026.

Thus, too, we have an “investment summit” on Monday – not quite in the first 100 days, but close enough (the government’s 100th day is Saturday) – even though it seems odd to have it before the Budget. It has backfired presentationally after the spat with P&O over its past employment practices meant the parent company, DP World, initially pulled out of the event.

We have ended up, inevitably, with two rival lists of 100-day achievements. One, compiled by journalists, especially in the Tory press, consists of freebies, giving away the Chagos Islands and sacking Sue Gray as chief of staff. The other, compiled by Labour, in a video recorded by the prime minister and a website called WhatHasKeirDone.co.uk, features bad Tory things that have been ended and good Labour things announced, but no actual “achievements” apart from “stopping the riots”.

The thing about a plan for the first 100 days is that it draws attention to the truth that nothing ever goes according to plan – and to another truth that no government is ever ready for office. Theo Bertram, a No 10 special adviser of the New Labour era who is now director of the Social Market Foundation, pointed out: “Getting ready for government is like getting ready for parenthood: there is nothing that prepares you. Starmer and his team went to all the civil service equivalents of NCT meetings but it’s only when you haven’t slept, one of you is crying and your life is cleaning up other people’s s*** that you begin to understand the task of parenting or governing.”

Blair wasn’t ready for office, and soon after his first 100 days was mired in a donor scandal – Labour had to pay back £1m to Bernie Ecclestone, boss of Formula 1 racing – and suffering a Commons rebellion by Labour MPs over a welfare cut (lone parent benefit in Blair’s case).

Even so, his honeymoon with the voters lasted until and beyond the following election, with a brief blip in the autumn of 2000 when lorry drivers blockaded petrol deliveries in protest at rising fuel duty. By the 2001 election, people felt better off, crime was down and schools and hospitals were improving.

There is nothing to say that something similar cannot happen next time, albeit starting from a lower base, both in the public finances and in public approval. Morgan McSweeney, who ran Labour’s election campaign this year and who is now in effect joint prime minister with Starmer, knows how to win against a divided right in tough fiscal times.

The Conservatives and Reform UK are likely to stay divided, and even if Labour’s huge majority is washed away in one go, the Liberal Democrats would prop up Starmer’s government. Obviously, Starmer could have done without some of the bumps in the road over the past 100 days, but most of them will be forgotten. It is what happens next that matters.