U.K.’s Labour Party is back in power, but the celebration is muted

The speech was punctuated with standing ovations and rapturous applause, including when he announced that Labour would nationalize railways.

But Starmer didn’t encourage much jubilation. He emphasized the need to “take tough long-term decisions” to revive the British economy and public services. He stressed that there would be sacrifices and compromises before there would be “light at the end of this tunnel.”

“The time is long overdue for politicians to level with you about the trade-offs this country faces,” he said. “If we want justice to be served, some communities must live close to new prisons. … If we want homeownership to be a credible aspiration for our children, then every community has a duty to contribute to that purpose.”

Once again he blamed previous Conservative Party governments for promoting “false hope” and “the politics of easy answers,” while they decimated public services and concealed billions of pounds ($29 billion) of unfunded spending commitments.

He suggested — though didn’t spell it out fully — that people in Britain should be prepared for higher taxes. “Just because we all want low taxes and good public services that does not mean that the iron law of properly funding policies can be ignored,” he said.

Starmer gave a mostly assured performance, although he did get tongue-twisted at one point, calling for the return of “sausages” rather than “hostages” from Gaza.

Starmer’s center-left Labour Party won big in July’s election, but it didn’t ride into power on a wave of enthusiastic support. It secured nearly two thirds of the seats in Parliament with slightly over one third of the vote. Labour strategists say the party designed and executed a smart campaign and got people in the right places to vote for Labour. The party also benefited from voters who wanted the Conservatives out after 14 years in power, and from a splintering of the vote on the right.

Starmer, not yet 100 days in office, has already seen his popularity dip. He has been criticized for cutting a benefit that helped retirees with winter heating bills, and he has been dogged by questions about gifts he and his wife accepted.

“It feels like the honeymoon is over,” said Gideon Skinner, head of political research at Ipsos polling. He noted that surveys showed 62 percent of Britons were dissatisfied with how the government was running the country. By comparison, when Tony Blair was just a few months into his premiership in 1997, only 15 percent of the public was dissatisfied.

Starmer seems prepared to take further hits. “I understand many of the decisions we must take will be unpopular,” he said Tuesday.

Arguably the most rousing section of his speech was when he condemned the “violent racist thugs” who took part in mass riots over the summer.

“To those who say that the only way to love your country is to hate your neighbor because they look different, I say, not only do we reject you, we know that you will never win,” he said.

He said that plenty of people in Britain have legitimate concerns about immigration levels, and that his government was committed to reducing net migration. But the debate, he said, should be “about control of migration” and “not about the worth of migrants.”