Keir Starmer eyed a decade of Labour rule when he won a 174 seat majority last year.

With the Tories defeated and divided, he had the chance to remake UK politics and usher in a new era of progressive change.

The reality has been a disappointing twelve months and a rapid loss of trust in the first Labour Government in 14 years.

Unless Starmer changes course, we are on a motorway with no exit to Nigel Farage as Prime Minister.

Labour’s turbulent twelve months in power has two elements.

The first is the Prime Minister’s failure to tell a story about where he is taking the country.

Voters want to move on from the sacrifices of the austerity and covid years and wave goodbye to the cost of living crisis.

They long for a message of hope and want to know better times are on the horizon.

Within weeks of his victory, Starmer instead delivered his infamous Rose Garden speech which warned that “things will get worse before we get better”.

He has struggled to recover from his early message of doom and gloom.

The second defining aspect of Labour’s first year in power has been sticking to “fiscal rules” which limit the government’s ability to borrow money.

Choosing to wear a fiscal straitjacket has resulted in Chancellor Rachel Reeves jacking up taxes and trying to cut spending in targeted areas.

These so-called rules led to winter fuel payment cuts for 90% of pensioners and trying to save up to £5bn from the disabled and sick.

So much of the Government’s energy has been spent trying to correct these blunders.

The winter fuel row dragged on for eleven months before an inevitable u-turn was made.

Starmer’s welfare reforms took four months to resolve before the cuts were ditched to avoid a likely Commons defeat.

At a time when Labour should have been boosting family budgets, Ministers have been explaining plans to take money away from people on low incomes.

Senior Labour figures blame the mis-steps on a lack of pre-election planning.

If mopping up the mess left behind by the Tories was to be the early priority, Starmer should have an inexpensive and oven ready programme of constitutional and political change.

No such blueprint existed and this hairshirt Government has been in permanent fire fighting mode.

However, there have been some positives.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner’s workers’ rights package will help restore dignity in the workplace and the budget raised more cash for public services.

Starmer has also cut an impressive figure on the world stage and comes across as the grown up in a room of volatile leaders.

But he has been defined by his mistakes and has struggled to capture the imagination in the way Tony Blair did in 1997.

The Prime Minister’s difficult first year is having a major impact on Scottish Labour’s chances at the next Holyrood election.

Polls showed Anas Sarwar’s party neck and neck with the SNP for Holyrood in the wake of the general election win, enough to topple the Nationalists.

Scottish Labour’s poll rating has since slumped and they are between 11 and 14 points behind with less than a year to go.

Sarwar’s strategy has been to try to influence Starmer’s Government privately and bite his lip in public.

He was deeply unhappy with the winter fuel cuts and frustrated with Starmer over the Rose Garden speech.

Sarwar also disagreed with the national insurance rise in the Budget and believes relations with business have been damaged. His fate next year is tied to Starmer improving.

But the stakes are even higher than the outcome of the Scottish Parliament election.

Polls show Farage is the beneficiary of Labour’s woes and Reform UK could form the next Government.

When President Biden was judged to have failed, US voters moved Right and installed Trump in the White House again.

Starmer needs to deliver on the people’s priorities if he is to avoid a nightmare on Downing Street.

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