Keir Starmer ‘restless for change’ as new Prime Minister heads to Scotland

Sir Keir Starmer is to travel to Scotland on Sunday as he insisted Labour’s general election victory had delivered a “clear mandate to govern for all four corners of the United Kingdom”.

The new Prime Minister told journalists in Downing Street: “I am restless for change and I think and hope that what you’ve already seen demonstrates that.”

He said tough decisions will need to be taken early and with “a raw honesty”.

Sir Keir will visit all four UK nations over the next couple of days, starting with Scotland on Sunday, during which time he will meet with First Minister John Swinney and “establish a way of working across the United Kingdom that will be different and better to the way of working that we’ve had in recent years and to recognise the contributions of all four nations”. He will visit Stormont and Cardiff on Monday.

Sir Keir told a press conference: “We clearly on Thursday got a mandate from all four nations. For the first time in 20 plus years we have a majority in England, in Scotland and in Wales and that is a clear mandate to govern for all four corners of the United Kingdom and therefore I shall set off tomorrow to be in all four nations.”

It comes after he promised “the work of change begins immediately” after leading Labour to landslide victory at the general election on Friday. Labour won 412 seats and the Tories 121, marking the worst result in the party’s history.

In Scotland, the SNP also suffered a humiliating night, returning just nine MPs, compared to 48 in 2019. John Swinney, the SNP leader and First Minister, said his party would “take stock” and reflect on a “very difficult and damaging” election.

Alex Neil, a former senior minister under both Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, told Scotland on Sunday the SNP needed “a fresh start with a leader who isn’t associated with the failures of the Sturgeon years”.

He said there needed to be “a new and credible independence strategy” and “a return to competence in government, including the introduction of fresh policies on key issues like health and education”, as well as “an end to pursuing gender-related policies which are alienating the electorate”.

Mr Neil added: “Doing all this is essential to preventing another rout in 2026 [the next Holyrood election]. Not doing it will result in guaranteed failure. It only takes the unionists to win another nine seats in the Scottish Parliament for us to lose power. If that happens, the independence cause will suffer a huge setback.”

Elsewhere, Sir Keir told journalists the troubled Rwanda deportation policy introduced by the former Conservative government is “dead and buried”. The Prime Minister said he was “not prepared to continue with gimmicks” as he confirmed the multimillion-pound scheme to send some asylum seekers to Kigali is to be scrapped.

He said: “The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started. It’s never been a deterrent. Look at the numbers that have come over in the first six and a bit months of this year, they are record numbers, that is the problem that we are inheriting.”

No asylum seekers have been deported under the scheme, described by critics as an “Alice in Wonderland adventure that was both absurd and inhumane”. But the financial implications of walking away from the deal and the total bill to the taxpayer are not yet known.

Sir Keir has said he will curb Channel crossings by hiring specialist investigators and using counter-terror powers to “smash the criminal gangs” behind the flow of migrants into the UK, but how this will work in practice remains largely unknown.

The Prime Minister said the newly-elected Labour Government had already started on the work to fix the “broken” NHS.

The new Government faces difficult choices over the public finances, with official forecasts implying major spending cuts over the coming years. During the election campaign, Sir Keir insisted he had no plans for major tax increases.

Asked on Saturday whether he would be willing to raise levies to fund public services, the Prime Minister told journalists: “In relation to the tough decisions, we’re going to have to take them and take them early. And we will do that with a raw honesty. But that is not a sort of prelude to saying there’s some tax decision that we didn’t speak about before that we’re going to announce now. It’s about the tough decisions to fix the problem and being honest about what they are.”

Sir Keir will make his debut on the international stage as Britain’s premier when he flies to Washington DC for the Nato summit next week, which is expected to include discussions on support for Ukraine.

He told journalists: “It is for me to be absolutely clear that the first duty of my Government is security and defence, to make clear our unshakable support of Nato. And of course to reiterate, as I did to President Zelensky yesterday, the support that we will have in this country and with our allies towards Ukraine.”

Sir Keir will also host the European Political Community summit in the UK on July 18.

He told ministers there was a “huge amount of work to do” as he chaired the first meeting of his new Cabinet on his first full day in Downing Street on Saturday. The Prime Minister told his top team it had been “the honour and the privilege of my life” to be invited by the King to form the Government.

Sir Keir appointed his Cabinet on Friday, making only minor changes to the shadow cabinet that existed before the election. He confirmed Rachel Reeves as the UK’s first woman chancellor, Angela Rayner as his deputy and Housing Secretary and Pat McFadden as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

David Lammy was officially named Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper Home Secretary, John Healey Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting Health Secretary and Bridget Phillipson Education Secretary.

Shabana Mahmood and Ed Miliband will retain their briefs of justice and energy respectively, but former attorney general Emily Thornberry was replaced by barrister Richard Hermer KC.

In his first speech on Downing Street, Sir Keir pledged to usher in an era marked by “stability and moderation” as he told voters: “My Government will serve you” whether or not they backed his party.

After a low turnout at the polls, he spoke of the need to rebuild trust in the political system following 14 years of Tory rule marred by the Partygate scandal and the chaos of Conservative infighting.

Labour’s vote share suggests the new Government is unlikely to enjoy much of a honeymoon period, with around 34 per cent of the electorate backing the party – less than Jeremy Corbyn secured in 2017.