There is no honeymoon for the new British President Keir Starmer after a summer of unrest – World

LONDON (AP) — There was no summer honeymoon for Keir Starmer.

Britain's new prime minister, elected by an overwhelming majority less than two months ago, was forced to cancel a planned holiday after anti-immigrant riots broke out across the country. He spent his first weeks in office dealing with the fallout and issuing dire warnings about the state of the nation and the economy.

As MPs returned to Parliament on Monday after a shortened summer recess, Starmer's left-leaning Labour government was preparing for a budget statement next month that is likely to include tax rises or public spending cuts – or both.

The atmospheric music stands in stark contrast to the campaign song of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the last Labour leader to win an election: “Things Can Only Get Better.”

“Frankly, things are going to get worse before they get better,” Starmer told voters in a televised address last week.

Starmer is trying to drive home the message that the right-wing Conservative Party, which was thrown out by voters in the July 4 election, has endured “14 years of decay” that has weakened Britain economically, structurally and even morally.

During the election campaign, Starmer promised to revive the country's sluggish economy and restore ailing public services such as the state-funded National Health Service (NHS).

Since coming to power, he has said the situation is “worse than we ever imagined” and there is an unexpected £22 billion ($29 billion) hole in the public finances. Labour has decided not to raise taxes on “working people” but the money has to come from somewhere. A payment to help pensioners heat their homes in winter has already been cut.

Starmer said last week that the budget statement due on October 30 would be “painful” and would bring “short-term pain but long-term benefits”.

Conservative economic spokeswoman Laura Trott accused Starmer and his government of trying to “evade responsibility for the tax increases they had always planned but kept secret from the public during the election campaign”.

Paul Johnson, head of the economic think tank Institute for Fiscal Studies, said Labour was being “disingenuous” in claiming it was surprised by the state of finances but that the Conservatives had left it “a mess to clean up”.

Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said Starmer's government must “take the reins” and face up to the fact that two key promises – improving public services and not raising taxes – “are not both feasible”.

Starmer faced a major challenge just weeks after taking office when anti-immigrant violence erupted following the stabbing of three children in the town of Southport. The violence, fuelled by online immigrant-blaming hoaxes and far-right groups, spread across England and Northern Ireland within days.

Starmer responded strongly, condemning a “mindless minority of thugs” fuelled by the “snake oil of populism” and promising swift justice and harsh punishments for rioters. But he says he has been hampered by previous Conservative spending cuts that have left courts overloaded and prisons overcrowded.

Amid concerns from some Labour MPs about the dire messages, the government is now trying to sound more positive, pointing out that in his first weeks in office, Starmer scrapped the Conservatives' stalled and controversial plan to send some asylum seekers arriving in Britain to Rwanda, struck deals with public service unions to end a wave of strikes and began to mend relations with the European Union after years of bitterness over Britain's exit from the bloc.

The government is promising a “packed” parliamentary programme to tackle some of voters' biggest problems, including unreliable trains, sewage-spewing water companies and rising rents. In the coming weeks it plans to introduce legislation to bring the railways into public ownership, set up a state-owned green energy company, introduce tougher regulations for water companies and strengthen workers' rights.

“After 14 years of Conservative rule, we needed to act quickly and drastically to stop the rot at the heart of our country's finances, our public services and our politics,” House of Commons leader Lucy Powell said on Sunday.

The opposition Conservatives have questioned Starmer's judgement and accused him of nepotism after several Labour supporters were given public sector jobs. But the defeated party is preoccupied with a leadership contest to succeed Rishi Sunak, which could give Starmer some breathing room.

Still, Ford said Starmer was “taking a big risk with voters' patience.”

“If you look at all the polls, it suggests that people are very aware of the severity of the crisis, and I think that will buy them some time,” he said. “But I think any strategy that seeks to disappoint voters and ask them to be patient is inherently risky.”