Keir Starmer walks straight into summer from hell

LONDON — Of all the crises Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer could have faced in his first month, handling rioters would seem like one he is well-qualified for.

He has literally been here before, having served as England and Wales’ most senior prosecutor at the time of the last serious outbreak of civil unrest across Britain in 2011.

 But with Britain’s public services at breaking point and its prisons full, and a disillusioned, angry population, Starmer has walked on to a sticky wicket — and even his predecessor Rishi Sunak knew it.

Starmer knows the criminal justice system inside out, and prisons were already firmly on his radar as being in urgent need of attention ahead of his landslide election win in July. 

Starmer is supported by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who has shadowed Britain’s interior ministry for eight years, initially as parliamentary committee chair then in Labour’s top team when they were in opposition. Starmer recently brought in well-respected external figures as justice ministers. 

Yet the disorder underlines the severity of the challenges ahead for Starmer, in terms of immediate practicalities but also in trying to articulate an adequate message to meet the level of bad feeling which has taken hold in the country.

Britain’s public services are at a breaking point and its prisons are full. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

A senior Labour figure, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said that while aspects of the crisis play to the new prime minister’s strengths, “when the fires are put out, he has to speak directly to poverty, inequality, alienation, division, people not feeling heard.”

Prepared for the worst

Starmer was well aware before the election that, if he became prime minister, the infrastructure he would inherit was creaking under enormous pressure. 

This was particularly stark in the case of prisons, where the Prison Governors’ Association was one of several organizations sounding the alarm about overcrowding. The state of jails was high on a list reportedly drawn up by Starmer’s Chief of Staff Sue Gray of potential horrors awaiting the next government. 

The system had only a few hundred empty spaces before the election, while the crown courts faced a significant backlog which had been growing every quarter since 2019.

Some even say that multiple impending policy headaches influenced Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an early election. 

A former senior No. 10 official said the specter of prisons imploding “was definitely a factor — one of several” alongside the intractable question of what to do about high levels of immigration. On this front, Sunak’s Downing Street did not explicitly anticipate the prospect of civil unrest but was finding it “hard to find a way through,” the same ex-official said. 

As well as some foresight of the issues in play, Starmer also had the benefit of relevant experience and briefings from the civil service as part of their formal preparations for the transition of power. 

Peter Ricketts, former U.K. national security adviser, said that while “you can never predict exactly what crisis will hit you” there had been “careful thinking” about using the government’s emergency committee COBRA, cross-departmental coordination and the National Security Council to respond to emergencies. 

He added that some of the new administration “are quite experienced — Keir Starmer saw these kind of domestic security crises when he was director of public prosecutions.”

‘A terrible inheritance’

While the Labour leader may have been prepared to take action right away to shore up the criminal justice system, he could not have known that large-scale disorder was about to make the situation even more difficult.

As Cassia Rowland, senior researcher on public services for the Institute for Government, spells out: “They got a pretty terrible inheritance, but [the riots] is exactly what everyone in the sector was crossing their fingers and desperately hoping wouldn’t happen until things had been got a bit more under control.”

The government has announced special measures intended to damp down the unrest, including 500 extra prison spaces and proposals to expand court capacity. 

However, these efforts may be hampered by the demands placed on those providing additional services, with the Criminal Bar Association warning that its members are “already working at maximum capacity.”

Polling carried out by YouGov in the wake of the riots found 85 percent of Britons opposed the unrest. | Yelim Lee/Getty Images

The Home Office sent out a plea Monday for volunteers with crisis response expertise across the civil service to help cover increased workloads, according to correspondence seen by POLITICO. 

Beyond the task of bringing the immediate crisis under control, there lies a deeper challenge for the new Labour government. 

Polling carried out by YouGov in the wake of the riots found 85 percent of Britons opposed the unrest, but the public also think there are longer-term political causes, with two-thirds of Britons saying immigration policy over recent years had contributed to the situation.

Conleth Burns, associate director of polling firm More in Common, said it was crucial to stress that people might see immigration policy as part of the context but they don’t see that as a justification for violence.

What the government must somehow confront is “broader disillusionment,” according to Burns, which encompasses ”frustration with immigration, which is absolutely there, but also frustration about GP appointments and the cost of living.”

Imran Hussain, Labour MP for Bradford East, said there were other underlying factors too, saying: “Those committing violence on our streets have been emboldened by public figures who’ve espoused vile anti-migrant sentiment and stoked up culture wars for decades.”

Starmer has some advantages in confronting this specific threat to social order, in the form of a pretty united party fresh from victory, and a strategy guru, Morgan McSweeney, who cut his teeth battling the British National Party in Dagenham in East London.

A key part of his approach there was to clean up the streets, offering tangible repairs, but it remains to be seen if that can be repeated on a much larger scale.

Starmer himself has long faced criticism about being tepid and lacking in connection with the public, while Nigel Farage’s Reform party have already shown they are willing to beat up on him over the handling of the riots where the Conservatives will not. 

He may be well aware of the dangerous moment at which he has taken the reins, but how he responds is crucial.

The same senior Labour figure quoted above said: “He’s got to get out of his comfort zone and do the vision thing. He’s got to offer an antidote to alienation, and he’s got to offer hope.”