The power he actually held
Keir Starmer was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 5 July 2024 to 20 July 2026. The office is First Lord of the Treasury. It is not a personal statute book. After 20 July 2026 Andy Burnham holds that office.
That limit is the first fact about his power. The second is that agenda-setting still moved welfare. A prime minister who means-tested Winter Fuel, ordered SDS40, signed off a Budget that raised employer NI, published an immigration white paper, and then later repealed the two-child limit is not a commentator. The live score has to read those instruments as they were enacted, not as campaign adjectives.
What went wrong, and what is proven
The sharpest household cost is official. On 29 July 2024 the Chancellor announced that Winter Fuel Payment would be restricted to Pension Credit and specified means-tested benefits. The Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/869) were made on 22 August and came into force on 16 September. DWP later counted a collapse in recipients from around eleven million to about 1.3 million for that winter. Starmer defended the choice at PMQs. He did not draft the SI alone; he owned the Cabinet choice.
SDS40 is a completed overcrowding choice. The Lord Chancellor announced the 40 percent release point in July 2024. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024 moved automatic release for specified standard determinate sentences. First tranche releases were 10 September 2024. Probation still had to supervise. Victims still had to be told. Early release is not a finding that every later offence was this Order.
The October 2024 Budget is several price instruments. Employer National Insurance rose. Agricultural property relief was tightened. Those are fiscal and labour-cost events. Farmers’ protests and later concessions are neighbouring if separately dated. VAT on private-school fees from 1 January 2025 is a different tax instrument with a distributional gain path stored separately.
Pathways to Work (18 March 2025) proposed a four-point PIP daily-living threshold and a cut in the Universal Credit health element for new claims. Disabled people’s organisations treated it as a rights cut. Later concessions and a Timms review are neighbouring; they do not unwrite the Green Paper as a completed proposal that moved legislation.
The May 2025 white paper Restoring Control over the Immigration System, launched with the “island of strangers” line, raised skilled-worker thresholds, extended settlement toward ten years, and closed overseas care-worker recruitment. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 (royal assent 2 December 2025) then created new small-boat offences, phone-seizure powers, and a statutory Border Security Command, and repealed the Safety of Rwanda Act. Scrapping Rwanda in July 2024 is not authorship of every later restrictiveness tool.
February 2024’s withdrawal of a £28 billion green-investment pledge was a Leader-of-the-Opposition instrument, not a statute. It still weakened expected decarbonization finance before the election. The 2013 Levitt review of the Savile charging file is an accountability record about the CPS under his DPP tenure: a later official finding that 2009 charging should have gone ahead. It is not a criminal conviction of Starmer.
The 20 July 2026 resignation is a completed constitutional act after a party revolt. Burnham took office the same day. A mid-term replacement without a general election is lawful. It is also a polarisation and stability cost.
What improved, and how far
The Rwanda operational halt on 6 July 2024 is a completed Home Office instruction on day two. The Supreme Court had already found the country unsafe in 2023. Parliament still had to repeal the 2024 Act; that repeal arrived inside the 2025 Border Security Act. The halt is not a finding that Channel deaths ended.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 received royal assent on 18 December 2025. Day-one paternity, sick pay from day one, a shorter unfair-dismissal qualifying period, and repeal of minimum-service-level strike rules are in the text. Commencement is phased into 2026–27. Angela Rayner and later business secretaries carried the bill. Starmer owned the King’s Speech priority.
Great British Energy Act 2025 (15 May 2025) created a Crown-owned clean-power company. Ed Miliband ran the file. Construction lag is years, not press conferences. Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (27 October 2025) abolishes section 21 no-fault evictions in England, with staged commencement. Housing ministers implemented; Starmer claimed the manifesto.
VAT on private-school fees from 1 January 2025 is a completed Finance Act 2025 instrument. It raises expected state-education revenue and household fees for remaining private pupils. Mixed effects stay on one row with one welfare reading here: a distributional turn toward the state system.
The Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Act received royal assent on 18 March 2026 and takes effect from 6 April 2026. That is the opposite of the July 2024 whip that removed the whip from MPs who voted to scrap the cap immediately. Keep those dates separate. The June 2025 Winter Fuel restoration is a completed U-turn on the 2024 SI.
Hillsborough Law — the Public Office (Accountability) Bill — was introduced on 16 September 2025. Starmer opened second reading. Commons passage in July 2026 is not yet royal assent. Treat introduction as a candour instrument, not as an Act. UK recognition of Palestine in September 2025 is a foreign-policy act shared with Canada, Australia, and Portugal. It does not open a crossing.
Shared responsibility, and what the score does not say
Reeves wrote Budgets. Cooper and Mahmood wrote borders. Kendall wrote welfare. Miliband wrote GB Energy. The King appointed and later received a resignation. Burnham is the successor, not a 2024 co-author. CPS lawyers sat on the Savile file. Treating Starmer as sole author of every SI would be the same error as treating him as a bystander on Winter Fuel.
The score does not say that every pensioner who was cold in January 2025 is a unique personal tort. It does not say that SDS40 is a mass jailbreak of sex offenders — those offences were excluded. It does not convert a white paper into a measured net-migration print. It does not treat a 2026 repeal as if the 2024 whip never happened. Confidence is high on legislation.gov.uk texts and GOV.UK instruments, and medium where local authorities, probation, HMRC, and later commencement regulations sit between the signature and a welfare indicator.
Related people on this page are counterpart premiers, presidents, and domestic officers who actually shared files: Sunak, Johnson, Truss, Macron, von der Leyen, Zelenskyy, Trump, Biden, Merkel, Tusk, Rutte, Merz.
A prime minister is powerful enough to own those Orders and Acts. He is not powerful enough to be the unique author of the OBR, the King, or a later Burnham pause, and the catalog keeps that line visible.
