One year of Keir: Can the Prime Minister save himself?

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, the boys are back. Tonight's the night that Liam and Noel Gallagher will reunite on stage for the first time in over 15 years.

0:34But first, it's been one year since Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer took to office on July the 4th with more than 400 MPs, making it a majority just short of Tony Blair's landslide in 1997. But it's been a rocky start. He faces plummeting polls and struggles inside his party as he enters the second stage of his plans for a decade of renewal. And polling expert Professor Sir John Curtis has called it the worst start for any newly elected prime minister. Sir Keir began by telling the public that things will get worse before they get better and warned of tough choices and a black hole left in the finances by his predecessors.

1:23But polling shows two in five people will struggle to pay their bills this year and the Prime Minister has admitted that people are yet to feel the benefits of the changes he promised. The Standards reporter, Fred Hood, took to the streets to find out what some members of the public have made of the Prime Minister's first year in office. Here's what they had to say. So it's a year since Keir Starmer's been in power. Can you think of any successful policies he's had so far? Tricky, which means no. They've kind of punted out a couple of policies that are five to ten years in delivery, so maybe it'll get better.

2:02They've got the welfare bill coming along that seems like no one's happy with. They've raised taxes, no one's happy with that. And they've made changes to the NHS, but no one's seeing any benefit from that. It's all been broken promises. it's unfortunately over promised undelivered but like any other government is it just the same script with a different set of actors oh the winter fuel tax allowance that was a bit of a kick in the teeth yeah my mother's quite elderly doesn't rely on it hugely but i know there's thousands if not millions of other elderly residents out there that do to be honest i'm not a huge fan.

2:42I work in construction. There's a massive issue with planning at the moment. It's really slow throughout the country. They talk about getting houses on the ground. That's very slow. If not, just ground to halt. More U-turns than successful policies, really. I do think the VAT on schools is a good idea. Whether that money's actually going to make any change to non-private schools, I don't know. Great British Rail was a good successful policy. I think that's needed. Not terribly impressed every year, to be honest. Can't really focus on one thing that has been good. And joining us now is The Standards' Chief Political Correspondent, Rachel Burford.

3:24Rachel, how has the Prime Minister fared this past year? Yeah, so obviously 12 months since that huge landslide election victory. First Labour Prime Minister in 14 years, only the fourth since the Second World War. So it was a big moment for Labour, for Keir Starmer and for the country. It's been a mixed bag, let's put it politely. If the polls are to be believed at the moment, he's certainly not riding high with the public. Recent polling by YouGov has suggested he has the lowest net favourability rating with the public on record. There have been, particularly in the last few weeks, very controversial policies put out by the Labour government and subsequently U-turns by ministers, which have sort of affected those public opinion ratings and also perhaps the public's perception of the Labour Party.

4:12And they came in saying we are strong and sort of stable and we are going to sort the country out and there have certainly been some teething problems, let's say, in those first 12 months. So what has the Labour government done well at, do you think? There are a lot of things that the Labour government say that they have achieved in their first year. The Home Secretary was on the media round this morning. She pointed to falling waiting times in the NHS, the announcement of additional neighbourhood police officers, extending free school meals and strengthening renters' rights. There have been a lot of plans, I think, that, you know, Sakhir Starmer had that have been perhaps thrown off course slightly by what's going on in America.

4:48Donald Trump's administration there, things that they certainly promised to do have perhaps not come to fruition in the same way that they would have hoped. I know it's been a year and that is a significant milestone, but that is not a long time in politics necessarily. So Keir has struggled to maintain the support of both voters and Labour MPs, hasn't he? The welfare cuts, bringing down the cost of providing particularly personal independence payments to disabled people, that was a big sort of pledge of this government. They were going to cut those and get more people into work or earning more money from work.

5:22That prompted an absolutely huge backlash from Labour backbench MPs and did result in a U-turn by the Prime Minister. That has sort of really, in recent weeks, really damaged Sir Keir Starmer's credibility. It looks like he was bullied into basically U-turning by his backbench MPs. Benefits cuts are a controversial policy and something that people feel very strongly on. So that has not been great. Obviously, we had this week Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, in tears in PMQs, which is not a sort of overly great image for the government. And I think all of that is sort of compounded. You've got a lot of very angry backbenchers who feel like the government isn't listening to them, looking at the polling and seeing they may be losing their seats at the next election to people like Reform or more left-wing candidates.

6:08And the public as well voted out a Conservative government in chaos and now are seeing a Labour government, which has got some problems within its own party. and there have been certainly some very chaotic things happen. I think Kistama has got a way to go now to sort of rebuild his reputation as someone who can deliver for the country. Tell me more about the threat of Nigel Farage's reform party. I think Nigel Farage has really seized on the unpopularity of some of the Labour policies, particularly immigration. It looks like Labour policies at the moment are not working. I mean, they haven't all come into effect yet, But certainly at the local elections in May, we saw reform seize control of many local councils across the country.

6:53That was a set of elections where it was mainly the Tories defending seats. But we did also see Labour losing out to reform in some of the seats they were defending too. Obviously, we've got local elections again next year, which are much wider. And there's a lot more Labour defences there, particularly here in London, where all the council seats in London will be up for re-election. and it will be very interesting to see how they do there because London remains the area where Labour are most popular at the moment but they are facing quite a significant threat I think from the left in the capital whereas in other parts of the country, in northern parts of England they're facing more of a threat from reform.

7:29And last night the former Labour MP Zahra Sultana announced that she will set up a new party with Jeremy Corbyn. Do we know any more about this development? There was a bit of speculation when she released that statement that Jeremy Corbyn had been a bit sort of blindsided because he didn't comment immediately or say anything. This morning, people were sort of saying that she jumped the gun a little bit. This afternoon, Jeremy Corbyn has released a statement in which he said he was delighted that Zahra Sultana would help us build a real alternative, was the phrase he used. His statement read that real change is coming.

8:03One year on from the election, this Labour government has refused to deliver the change people expected and deserved. Poverty, inequality and war are not inevitable. Our country needs to change direction now. He doesn't give details about sort of what this left wing party will be, what it'll be called, who'll be in it necessarily. Interestingly, Zahra Sultana suggested that she'd be co-leading it with Jeremy Corbyn, although he doesn't quite say that in his statement. There are quite a few sort of independent MPs that were elected at the last election on very left-wing tickets. So we may expect some of those to be joining him.

8:35Also, there are a lot of independent councillors and even some councils being led by sort of independent alliances, left-wing alliances in Britain, a few in London as well. There may be some kind of organisation before the local elections next year in which all the independents kind of come together and fight those elections on the same sort of principles and policies. And finally, do you have anything else to add? At the general election last year, we did see a lot of Labour MPs feeling the impact, particularly of the war in Gaza and some of the policies that they had in their manifesto and seeing big threats from the left, notably West Streeting only winning by a few hundred votes in his East London constituency.

9:15Jonathan Ashworth obviously losing his seat to an independent. a lot of those voters were very invested in the war in Gaza and what's going on in Gaza. And obviously that has not gone away. How the Labour government has responded to Israel and Gaza, and we saw the Home Secretary moving to prescribe Palestine action, the campaign group as a terror organisation this week. And that has galvanised and quite angers a lot of people on the left who see that as a very right-wing move. I think there's definitely a market for a left-wing party at the moment, which the Greens haven't really been able to seize upon in the same way that some of these independents have.

9:52But obviously a lot can change in four years before we go to another general election. Unless you change the constitution, Donald Trump will not be president. Potentially a very different world that we're looking at. So a year in, the polling is not great for Labour, but things can certainly change a lot before we actually go to the polls again as a country. Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, the launch of the Comeback Tour from Oasis. We'll see you back here in just a moment.

10:33Welcome back. Now, it's the gig that fans have been waiting 5 ,795 days for. Tonight, Oasis kick off their reunion tour at Cardiff's Principality Stadium. Speaking to TalkSport Radio, Noel Gallagher said, It's sounding huge. This is it. There's no going back now. Last summer, more than 10 million fans from 158 countries queued to buy tickets, making it the biggest ever concert launch in the UK and Ireland. That's the equivalent of nearly 5 % of the entire UK population applying for tickets. Oasis were the biggest band in Britain from 1994 to 1997, selling tens of millions of copies of their first three albums, Definitely Maybe, What's the Story, Morning Glory and Be Here Now.

11:27And the Standards Head of Culture, Martin Robinson, is lucky enough to be heading to the venue for the Oasis Live 25 tour. Martin, what is the atmosphere like in Cardiff right now? It's like a pregnant kind of feeling of anticipation. Usually, back in the day, Oasis gigs, it was like the local football hooligans come into town. It's always quite tasty. Hoards of lads, loads of booze and all that. But actually, there's a real mix of ages, genders, and it feels like a very positive, fun atmosphere. It wasn't always the case. Back in the day, it kind of had the real edge to it, a bit of a mild threat going on.

12:05But now it feels like a bit more of a party atmosphere, I've got to say. What is it about Oasis that has spurred so many fans to get tickets? For this particular gig and this particular tour, them having been away for so long, just the fact that they haven't been around, there's a real edge. This is the first gig back. there's something there but also I think it's just a testament to the place that they have in the national life of the country sort of like the history musical history of the country and how they were tied up in Britpop the 90s really wrapped themselves into sort of the story of what happened over the last 30 40 years but also how their music has sort of wound itself into people's lives this is music for first time you meet someone it's for weddings it's for funerals it It really is the kind of thing that people take to heart.

12:50So I think that level of emotional investment that they have is really going to make tonight particularly special. Do we know what the set list will be or who might be joining the brothers on stage? No, we don't. There's been a few set lists been circulating online. Whether they're real or not, I don't know. I don't think there's going to be new surprises. Obviously, there's no new songs or anything. They're going to be straight down the line with the big hitters. It'd be nice to hear a few curveballs, I think, some things that we were not expecting and maybe some stuff from the later albums or just some deeper cuts.

13:19But we'll have to see. I don't think they're going to have any guests. This isn't like Glastonbury. Just having those two, Noel and Liam together back on stage, just that alone will be enough. I don't think you'll see anyone else. That's the big moment. When they walk on stage and we get to see Oasis with Liam and Noel together again, that's the big payoff. That's the money shot. Fans have travelled from all over the world. What are you most looking forward to about this gig? I think the major thing that I'm looking forward to is, again, just that visual of having them back together. I'm going to be really interested to see how much they enjoy it.

13:49Obviously, the story of Oasis is one of great tunes, but also acrimony and falling out and insults. And to have them back on stage is just going to be something. People are going to be going absolutely bananas. They really are. The sort of crowd, I'm sure, is going to be absolutely incredible. But I kind of want to see whether they're enjoying it as well. You see what I mean? They generally don't give much away. It's kind of hard faces, glaring, but not ones for huge crowd interaction or anything like that. But I'd like to see sort of a bit of an inclination that, yeah, we're back and we are absolutely loving it.

14:22It's going to be an exciting time. We'll be interested to see how it develops, you know, whether they're going to behave themselves, whether they're going to be falling out at any stage or what will happen. Wherever they go, it's going to be a circus. It's going to be a talking point. That's always been the good thing about Oasis, like anything could happen.

14:40and that's the standard for all the latest news head to standard.co.uk if you'd like to get in touch please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk we'll be back here on monday at 4 p.m we'll see you then