If the polls are “even close to being right”, Keir Starmer will become PM on Friday, said Glen Owen in The Mail on Sunday – a “seismic moment” for which Whitehall has been preparing for more than a year.
His first task that morning will be to visit the King to request his permission to form a government. He’ll then address the nation from outside No. 10, before being “clapped through the door by staff”.
Inside, he’ll be given a security briefing, and told by a senior Naval commander to draft four “letters of last resort” – orders to be carried out if the Government is “wiped out in a nuclear attack“.
The first week
It will all happen at “dizzying speed”, said Toby Helm in The Observer. Almost before he has had time to look around his new home, he’ll be “flooded with congratulatory calls from world leaders” – none of whom will want to be bumped to the back of the queue.
Within a few hours, he’ll begin appointing his government, making Rachel Reeves Britain’s first-ever female chancellor. The appointments will continue over the weekend, and Parliament will return on Tuesday to swear in hundreds of new MPs. Over the following two days, Starmer will be “propelled onto the world stage” at a Nato summit in Washington; and on 18 July, he’ll host around 50 European leaders for a summit at Blenheim Palace.
A Starmer victory will end 14 years of Tory rule, but it will take “more than a change of government to cure what ails Britain”, said Tim Harford in the FT. Record NHS waiting lists; sclerosis in the planning system; low productivity – these will require time and ingenuity to fix, as well as money.
In week one, Starmer and Reeves will finally be able to “lift the bonnet and examine the state of public finances“, said Gabriel Pogrund et al in The Sunday Times. Shadow ministers are already working on a “blame game”, preparing to argue that public finances are even more stretched than they’d originally feared. But, ultimately, they’ll still have to balance their desire for early policy achievements (the launch of Great British Energy, say) with the fiscal situation as it stands.
The rocks under the surface
A big test will come in the autumn, when Reeves will deliver her first budget: she’ll want to avoid the billions of pounds in spending cuts “baked in by the Tories”, which are due to take effect by December. In the short term, economic tailwinds such as falling energy prices and mortgage rates may give Labour a boost, said Kamal Ahmed in The Daily Telegraph. But there are “myriad rocks under the surface”. Can Starmer really strike returns deals to stop the boats? Can Wes Streeting, taking over as health secretary, make strides towards restoring the NHS?
Starmer will face challenges abroad, too, said William Hague in The Times. He’ll have to navigate the rise of the French far-right; the growing likelihood of a second Trump presidency; wars in Ukraine and Gaza; and the risk of a “crisis over Taiwan”.
All the while, opponents such as Nigel Farage will be ready to pounce, said Trevor Phillips in the same paper. That will worry Starmer, who will enter No. 10 with the lowest popularity ratings of any “opposition leader elected to office on record”.
With no money in the Treasury, his honeymoon will be short. To have any chance of a second term, he’ll have to invert the doctrine made famous by US politician Mario Cuomo: Starmer campaigned in prose, but now he needs to get ready to “govern in poetry”.