Keir Starmer's first year: a catalogue of errors

It is a year ago this week that Keir Starmer stormed to electoral victory, with a massive 174-seat majority and a promise that "change begins now". Back then, senior Labour officials spoke of treating their first term "as an extended [election] campaign for the second that would almost inevitably follow in 2029", said Patrick Maguire in The Times.

But just 12 months on, all that optimism has evaporated: "nobody dares sound so presumptuous now". Even before this week's debacle, the opinion polls did not make happy reading, said James Frayne in The Daily Telegraph. As things stand, Labour is heading for a "devastating defeat" in 2029. Indeed, it is only because the Right is split that Labour is "even vaguely in contention with Nigel Farage's Reform, which comfortably tops the polls". As for Starmer's personal ratings, they are so "awful" that some Labour MPs are wondering if he'll survive until the next election.

"With hindsight, it is not hard to see why Labour has struggled," said The Sunday Times. It inherited problems, including a low-growth economy, weak productivity, long NHS waiting lists, overcrowded prisons and ballooning benefits spending, that would have challenged any government. But it is also clear that it had not prepared properly for power, said John Rentoul in The Independent.

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Starmer's first chief of staff, Sue Gray, may have been partially responsible for the early sense of drift, and for the PR disaster caused by revelations that the PM and his ministers had accepted expensive clothes, glasses and other freebies from a wealthy donor. She was soon defenestrated; but it "didn't take long for the caravan of blame to circle round and roll over her successor". Now, MPs are baying for the blood of Morgan McSweeney, who led efforts to wrest the party away from the Corbynites and who is loathed by many on the Labour Left.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is also culpable, said Roger Bootle in The Daily Telegraph. All her gloomy talk about the "fiscal black hole" did not engender confidence among business leaders; nor, given the urgent need to boost growth, was it wise to impose multiple fresh burdens on business, including the hike to employers' NI.

But, ultimately, Labour's problem is Starmer himself, said Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday. He cuts a dash on the international stage, but at home he seems detached from his own administration. MPs say he is "never there". Ministers say he never sticks to one course. But you don't have to hear that from them. "Just listen to the man himself." Last month, he delivered his speech on immigration in which he warned that Britain risked becoming an "island of strangers". He denied he was trying to win back Reform voters, and brushed off claims that his words were similar to those used in Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech – until last week, when he said it had been a mistake that he regretted. He had been distracted by external events (including the firebombing of the door to his former home), and had not read his speech properly before delivering it.

I'm not sure I buy that, said Trevor Phillips in The Times. But the bigger question is why he was not willing to defend a point about the need for controls on migration that most voters agree with. It reinforces the view that his administration "remains, at heart, a liberal pressure group", easily blown about "by the breeze of fashionable opinion, in office but still not in power".

If Starmer had articulated a clear vision, he could steer his party firmly in that direction, said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper – and keep going even when it led to costs for some groups. But the PM is "less a conviction politician than a shape-shifting pragmatist", said Jason Cowley in The Sunday Times. He will defend a position – the winter fuel payments cut, the refusal to hold a national inquiry into rape gangs, the reforms to Pip – until he is forced to retreat. With each U-turn, his authority ebbs away, making it even harder for him to push through the difficult decisions that are needed to restore the national finances.

Starmer's first year has not been without achievement, said Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper. NHS waiting lists are coming down; the lowest earners will soon start to feel a bit better off, thanks to rises in the minimum wage; the employment rate has risen, "albeit marginally"; planning rules have been liberalised; and the government has done some things that are very popular – such as cracking down on polluting water companies.

Moreover, the PM has proved skilled on the world stage – not least in negotiating tariff deals with the "notoriously tricksy" US president. Labour has been terrible at communicating its successes. But if it canild on the foundations it has laid in this first year – leading to further cuts to waiting lists, more jobs, more new housing – and avoid self-inflicted errors, its early mistakes might yet be forgiven.