Sir Keir Starmer has announced his latest U-turn: a £5bn change of course over his flagship welfare bill.
With just minutes to go before MPs were set to vote on an already watered down welfare bill, he confirmed plans abandon a key plank of the reforms in order to get them through parliament and avoid a mass rebellion from his own MPs.
The U-turn left the prime minister’s authority battered and left the chancellor with a gaping hole in the public finances.
As Sir Keir marks one year in office,The Independent looks at all the times he has U-turned on his promises or let voters down.
Benefit cuts
Sir Keir suffered the biggest blow to his leadership since coming into power a year ago after he was forced to abandon a key plank of his controversial benefit cuts in order to get them through parliament.
Just 90 minutes before voting began, ministers announced that plans to restrict eligibility for personal independence payments (PIP) – which had been the central pillar of the government’s reforms – were being dropped.
Sir Keir had already been forced into a U-turn the week before when more than 130 Labour MPs signed an amendment that would have effectively killed the bill off. Among the concessions announced then was a plan to impose tougher eligibility rules only on future PIP claimants, leaving existing recipients unaffected.
Winter fuel payments
In July, the chancellor announced that pensioners not in receipt of pension credits or other means-tested benefits would no longer receive winter fuel payments – a £300 payment to help with energy costs in the colder months.
After spending months ruling out a U-turn, the prime minister in May told MPs he now wants to ensure more pensioners are eligible for the payment – something he claimed has come as a result of an improving economic picture.
After weeks of speculation over what the changes would look like, it has now been confirmed that 9 million pensioners will be eligible for the payment – a huge uplift from the 1.5 million pensioners who received the payment in winter 2024-25.
Sir Keir spent months brushing off calls for a national inquiry with statutory powers into grooming gangs as unnecessary.
As Elon Musk launched himself headlong into the debate, calling for a fresh probe into the scandal, Labour’s refusal looked increasingly unlikely to hold. But Sir Keir stood firm, and even accused those calling for an inquiry, including Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, of “jumping on the bandwagon of the far-Right”.
But in yet another screeching U-turn, after months of holding out, Sir Keir in June accepted the recommendation of Baroness Casey to hold an inquiry.
Waspi women
In a 2022 interview, Sir Keir said: “All your working life you’ve got in mind the date on which you can retire and get your pension, and just as you get towards it, the goalposts are moved and you don’t get it, and it’s a real injustice.
“We need to do something about it. That wasn’t the basis on which you paid in or the basis on which you were working.”
But, in a familiar change of tune since becoming prime minister, Sir Keir last year sent his work and pensions secretary out to tell Women Against State Pension Inequality, Waspi women, they would not be getting any compensation.
National insurance
Labour’s pre-election manifesto promised not to increase national insurance.
It stated: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.”
But, Sir Keir and Chancellor Ms Reeves used the ambiguity around whether they meant employer or employee national insurance contributions to steamroll the pledge at Labour’s first Budget in power.
The pair argue that they only promised to keep employee contributions frozen and instead landed firms with a 2 per cent increase to employer national insurance contributions.
Tractor tax
Farmers have also said they feel betrayed by the PM, after a 2023 National Farmers Union (NFU) speech in which he promised to have “a new relationship with the countryside and farmers”.
Sir Keir claimed to be concerned that “each day brings a new existential risk to British farming. He added: “Losing a farm is not like losing any other business, it can’t come back.”
Going even further, then shadow environment secretary Steve Reed said it was “desperate nonsense” to suggest he would scrap tax breaks for farmers, just weeks before the July 4 poll.
But, in another hugely unpopular Budget bombshell, Sir Keir slashed agricultural property relief, meaning previously exempt farms will be his with a 20 per cent levy on farming assets worth more than £1m.
Critics have said it will see family farmers forced to sell up, ripping the heart out of countryside communities.
And other times the PM has rowed back on his words…
Two-child benefit cap
Promising in 2020 to create a social security system fit for the 21st century, Sir Keir said: “We must scrap the inhuman Work Capability Assessments and private provision of disability assessments… scrap punitive sanctions, two-child limit and benefits cap.”
But before the election, Sir Keir said Labour was “not changing” the Tory policy if Labour were to win power. He has stuck to his guns, even suspending seven Labour MPs for rebelling against his King’s Speech in a bid to have the policy scrapped.
And now, it looks like the prime minister is gearing up to row back on the position. While nothing has been announced, the prime minister is privately said to be in favour of lifting the cap.
He has refused to commit to anything until the child poverty strategy is published in the autumn but has insisted he is “absolutely determined” to “drive down” child poverty and has repeatedly sidestepped questions on the issue when pressed on it.
£28bn green investment pledge
As shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves announced the party’s plans for an extra £28bn a year in green investment at Labour’s conference in September 2021.
But before the election, Sir Keir ditched the £28bn a year target and said instead that he would spend a far smaller sum on Great British Energy, a national wealth fund for clean investment and pledges on energy efficiency.
Bankers’ bonuses
Strict regulations on bonuses, which limit annual payouts to twice a banker’s salary, were introduced by the EU in 2014 in a bid to avoid excessive risk-taking after the 2008 financial crisis.
Former prime minister Liz Truss and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng scrapped the cap in 2022, in a bid to encourage more investment in the UK.
Sir Keir had previously vowed to reinstate the cap, saying in 2022 that lifting it “shows the Tories are absolutely tone deaf to what so many people are going through”.
But in another major U-turn, Ms Reeves announced before the election that the party “does not have any intention of bringing that back”.
