The inside story of Labour’s first 100 days in power

Keir Starmer and other senior Downing Street figures on the new government’s bumpy start, from riots to rebellions.

At this year’s Labour party conference, health secretary Wes Streeting opened his DJ set at one late-night party with the feminist anthem Independent Women by Destiny’s Child. It was a tribute to Rachel Reeves, who was standing nearby.

A few moments later, partygoers watched as the health secretary scurried over, a look of faux alarm on his face. “It’s the lyrics – I’m so sorry!” he gasped. The chancellor, a quizzical look on her face, joined him as he mouthed the offending words: “The shoes on my feet (I bought ’em). The clothes I’m wearing (I bought ’em) … ” They stifled horrified laughter.

The cash-for-clothes row, in which Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and, to a lesser extent, Reeves have come under sustained fire for accepting gifts worth thousands of pounds from Labour peer Lord Waheed Alli, has been a low point for the newly elected government. It is certainly not how Starmer envisaged his first 100 days in office would end. Keen to avoid the same mistakes as Tony Blair, who later admitted he wished he had done more early on, this Labour government got off to a hyperactive start after 14 years out in the cold.

But along with all the big decisions, new legislation, foreign trips and attempts to set the political narrative, they have found themselves buffeted by headwinds: not just over donations, but also stories of internal rows at No 10 and, perhaps most significantly, a backlash over the cut to the winter fuel payment.

There are, of course, different views on how meaningful “100 days” assessments really are. Do these first weeks set the tone for government, or are they quickly forgotten? After all, any new administration takes time to get their feet under the table, especially when they have little institutional memory of power. But, for better or worse, this is a moment when the political ecosystem pauses and ponders. I spoke to more than two dozen people, including cabinet ministers, senior political aides, leading civil servants and Keir Starmer himself, to get a sense of how it has been on the inside.

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When Keir Starmer walked up Downing Street just hours after Labour had won its enormous landslide victory, he grasped his wife Victoria by the hand and worked his way up the flag-waving, cheering crowd, shaking hands and hugging. The images were beamed across the world. But what nobody picked up was the fleeting moment when the new prime minister locked eyes with his two teenage children, who were tucked away in the throng.

“I can safely tell you this secret now,” he tells me. “We hid the kids in the crowd in Downing Street. I really wanted them to be there, but we didn’t want them walking down the street because of the way we’ve tried to keep them out of the public eye.

I caught their eye. I didn’t go to them, for obvious reasons. But it was fantastic to have them there. Nobody knew. But it was a really important moment for the family.”

After Starmer’s speech to the country, the couple headed through the famous black door of No 10 to be greeted by the cabinet secretary, Simon Case. But Starmer stopped briefly to shake hands with one man: Morgan McSweeney, the political mastermind behind the party’s win. The Starmers were led into the cabinet room, where they were joined by their children, Victoria’s sister and elderly father, Bernard, for a cup of tea and a biscuit, and a brief chance to privately take in the enormity of what had just unfolded.

For his team, bone-tired from an intense 43-day election campaign, yet running on adrenaline after a night of dramatic results, their arrival in Downing Street on the morning of 5 July came as something of a shock.

“You get two or three hours sleep in a hotel, then stagger to 70 Whitehall,” one senior No 10 figure says, referring to the address of the Cabinet Office. “They give you a bacon sandwich, a coffee and a terrifying security briefing, and then you get ushered into a room to start forming a government.”

After Starmer’s speech to the country, the couple headed through the famous black door of No 10 to be greeted by the cabinet secretary, Simon Case. But Starmer stopped briefly to shake hands with one man: Morgan McSweeney, the political mastermind behind the party’s win. The Starmers were led into the cabinet room, where they were joined by their children, Victoria’s sister and elderly father, Bernard, for a cup of tea and a biscuit, and a brief chance to privately take in the enormity of what had just unfolded.

For his team, bone-tired from an intense 43-day election campaign, yet running on adrenaline after a night of dramatic results, their arrival in Downing Street on the morning of 5 July came as something of a shock.

“You get two or three hours sleep in a hotel, then stagger to 70 Whitehall,” one senior No 10 figure says, referring to the address of the Cabinet Office. “They give you a bacon sandwich, a coffee and a terrifying security briefing, and then you get ushered into a room to start forming a government.”

But while his first three months have brought successes at home and abroad, his government has been beset by rows not just over donations and internal power struggles at No 10, but over the tough economic choices ahead, as well as questions over his political judgment that have left many in his party feeling jittery.

Those who work most closely with Starmer say that his strength is “keeping his eye on the horizon” and being unswayed by what he sees as obstacles along the way. “I knew from observing previous governments that you’re going to get side winds all the time,” Starmer says. “But my line of sight is on what I’ve got to have delivered after one five-year term, and a decade of national renewal.”

Yet even those close to him accept he doesn’t always appreciate how aloof that approach might appear. “We all hope it’s teething troubles,” one senior Labour politician confides. “But we all worry in case it’s something worse.”

Finally, after warnings from senior aides and cabinet ministers to “get a grip”, Starmer came to the conclusion that some of those side winds risked blowing the government fully off course. His response: Gray would have to go.

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One of Starmer’s first tasks on entering office was to pick his cabinet. He had always planned to transfer his shadow team straight over into government roles, with a few tweaks. The reshuffle appeared to go smoothly. But behind the scenes it was more fraught.

“We had to work out who had held their seats and where everybody was. Hilary Benn was still in Leeds. Steve Reed was late because he was at home in his shorts,” one aide says. They were given the Northern Ireland and environment briefs. “After Shabana [Mahmood] was offered justice secretary she panicked about whether she was also lord chancellor, which usually goes with the job, and tried to get back into the room to check.” She was reassured that was the case by civil servants. “Liz [Kendall] was so emotional she was in tears.”

The arrivals didn’t go entirely to plan. They had been carefully choreographed so the most senior ministers would get there first. But Yvette Cooper and David Lammy, as home and foreign secretary respectively, had their movements controlled by their security teams, and in the meantime Wes Streeting sauntered up the street.

Initially at least, the rest of it went as hoped. Just four days after taking office, Starmer flew to Washington DC for the Nato summit. “It’s a gift from Rishi,” he chuckled to officials. It was a useful early opportunity to meet world leaders while the electoral gold dust was still glimmering, and they all were keen for some to rub off.

Starmer paid his first visit to the White House at the height of speculation over Joe Biden’s future. The two men discussed the “special relationship” and wider global affairs. But officials who had followed the UK election campaign closely were amused when they touched on their fathers, and Starmer volunteered that his was a toolmaker.