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Sir Keir Starmer was not meant to be doing an emergency news conference on the Greenland crisis in the Downing Street briefing room on Monday.
The prime minister was meant to be about 200 miles away, delivering a speech much closer to voters’ concerns around household budgets and what this Labour government is doing to try to help.
2026 was supposed to be the year in which he tried to win back disillusioned voters – and MPs – with a big push to cut the cost of living, be it around rail fares, energy bills, childcare or lifting the two-child benefit cap.
Instead, he has found his agenda blown wildly off course by the whirlwind that is Donald Trump.
But what matters on the global stage affects voters at home: tariffs will hurt the economy and could cost jobs. Conflicts drive up costs, be it in your shopping basket or heating your home.
As the prime minister put it on Monday when he called out Trump on his tariff threat over Greenland: “In today’s world geopolitics is not something that happens somewhere else…when instability grows it’s rarely those with the most power who pay the price… we must use every tool of government, domestic and international, to fight for the interests of ordinary people, tackling the cost of living today also means engagement beyond our borders.”
As Starmer does that, deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell is taking on the role of “campaigner in chief” for the party ahead of the May elections.
Because as global crises keep rolling, Labour could be running into a polling crisis at home.
Later this year, Labour will be contesting 4,000 council seats, representing 20 million voters, plus Scotland’s Holyrood and Wales’s Senedd. They come with the party trailing Reform and the Conservatives on 17% of the vote.
It is a perilous predicament in what looks set to be a…
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