Keir today, gone tomorrow: is welfare U-turn beginning of the end for Starmer?

Keir Starmer's first year in office has turned out stormier than he might have hoped when he entered Number 10 on a landslide victory – and yesterday's climbdown on disability-benefit cuts brings an uncomfortable edge to his impending anniversary.

When he was campaigning ahead of the general election, Starmer promised "stability and competence", said The Economist, but it's "not quite worked out like that", and his government is now "in trouble".

What did the commentators say?

"It's worth taking a beat to reflect on the enormity of this moment," said Beth Rigby, political editor of Sky News, because, less than a year ago, the PM won by a landslide. Being "forced to retreat by angry foot soldiers" this early in his reign is "simply unprecedented".

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The welfare-bill episode will force Starmer into a rethink. The "trajectory and nature of this government has been permanently changed" by this climbdown, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. It shows that, "when push comes to shove", the government can't "grit out and defend cuts in public spending".

"It's also a defeat for the 'MPs need to get in line' style" that Starmer's team thought they could "make their default approach to managing the Parliamentary Labour party. This is a "significant moment" for "how Starmer's administration handles the next four years".

The chance of more rebellions has just got higher, said Sam Blewett at Politico. "Labour MPs will be asking themselves whether they can be really sure any line Starmer sets will hold" after his authority has been "well and truly dented by a third major U-turn in quick succession".

There is a view among Labour MPs "that Starmer's Downing Street operation doesn't listen to them", said Henry Zeffman at the BBC, and their "frustration" is directed "with increasing intensity at Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister's chief of staff", whose future Starmer might feel forced to reconsider.

He may also have to reconsider Rachel Reeves' position because the chancellor has become "extraordinarily unpopular among Labour MPs", who blame her for "marching them up the hill, then down again, making them look stupid" on winter fuel payments and the welfare bill, said Andrew Marr in The New Statesman.

The latest U-turn leaves "Starmerism, the final line of defence between the far left and the levers of power, on the brink of collapse", said Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph. The concessions on welfare "may buy him a little more time" but Starmer's days in 10 Downing Street "are starting to look numbered".

What next?

When the House of Commons votes on the welfare bill next week, there should be enough MPs who "see the concessions as a victory" and "decide that they are better off taking the win than risking being part of a doomed last stand", said the FT's Bush.

But if the government were to lose that vote, it would threaten Starmer "directly", said Marr in The New Statesman, and, extraordinarily, after so many "self-indulgent Tory leadership battles", Labour might "throw itself into something similar". We "should be sceptical" of the prospect but "once a party has decided its leader simply cannot win, nothing matters more".