Things can only get worse. It's not the 1997 spirit, is it? Let's have more hope from Keir

IT really isn’t 1997, is it? Back then, a confident new Labour prime minister promised that “things can only get better”.

- Matthew d’Ancona

In sharp contrast, Sir Keir Starmer warns today, in his first keynote speech as PM, that “things will get worse before we get better”. Note the ominous “we”.

His political logic is not hard to decode. The Prime Minister and Rachel Reeves have a window of opportunity, in the aftermath of Labour’s landslide victory on July 4 but before the remnants of the Conservative Party elect their new leader on November 2, in which to get as much of the bad news into the public domain as they possibly can.

Last month, the new Chancellor announced — with some justification, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility — that the Tories had left her with unfunded commitments adding up to £22 billion.

Signalling tax rises and spending cuts ahead, she demanded departmental savings of £5.5 billion this year and scrapped winter fuel payments for around 10 million pensioners: a measure that is already causing her political difficulty. Today, Starmer goes much further, identifying “a societal black hole” and committing his government to “unpopular decisions now if it’s the right thing for the country”. Correctly, he distances himself from the infantile populism of the post-Brexit years: “When there is rot deep in the heart of a structure, you can’t just cover it up. You can’t tinker with it or rely on quick fixes.”