Keir Starmer’s premiership is certainly struggling to sustain any forward momentum. One of the many accusations thrown at the Prime Minister relates to the multiple policy U-turns that he and his government have performed since coming to power in 2024. The latest policy reversal came with the forced climbdown over the shelving of local council elections. This embarrassing about turn, meaning elections will happen after all in 30 councils, followed shortly after ministers abandoned plans for mandatory digital IDs (while leaving open the possibility that people will be able to use other documents to prove their right to work). Before these two, we had the U-turn on farmer’s inheritance tax and a reversal on business rates for pubs in the aftermath of the November Budget. It may be by the time you read this the government has watered down its heavily flagged plan to limit jury trials after a concerted backlash from MPs, Peers and senior figures in the legal profession.
Even these policy reversals are not isolated changes of direction – as shifts on welfare policy, winter fuel allowances, and the two-child benefit cap in 2025 demonstrate. Politico has a handy list complete with days to reversal which is being constantly updated to reflect each new U-turn.
Looking beyond the obvious political damage of changing policy direction, though, what should we make of such policy reversals?
When the facts change…
‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’ This familiar question, often attributed to John Maynard Keynes or possibly Winston Churchill, was alluded to by Boris Johnson in January 2021 to justify a third national lockdown when he announced: ‘The facts are changing and we must change our response’. This is one approach to announcing policy U-turns – to utilise changed circumstances for a change in approach. A national emergency may have caused Johnson’s during the pandemic, but he would have been keenly aware of the political rhetoric of previous Conservative Prime Ministers.
Of course, Margaret Thatcher famously set the tone against such an approach in her 1980 party conference speech: ‘To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only this to say, “You turn if you want; the lady’s not for turning”.’ Thatcher came to power after Ted Heath, the undisputed king of the U-turn, and her ire at U-turns may be understood in part as a reaction to her predecessor. Heath had in 1972 reversed promises to cut spending by pouring money into health, education and welfare and, after similarly promising not to bail out ‘lame duck’ industries, had nonetheless started to nationalise them, as well as passing the interventionist Industrial Relations Act 1971. Thatcher herself was not immune from the U-turn: on defence spending she shifted her position in the first 18 months of her premiership reversing her commitment to increase spending in favour of fiscal conservatism.
Since then, though, the U-turn has been increasingly depicted, even internationally, as a sign of political weakness. The US call it flip-flopping. Australians describe it as ‘back flipping’. More recently, Trump critics have dubbed him the TACO President (always chickening out). But as U-turning has developed its negative reputation, there has been a lack of clarity about what the term really involves.
Different kinds of U-turns
Not all policy reversals are the same. The noise around U-turns may be similar, but we should distinguish between a vocal profession of changed values and a genuine change in the direction of policy (or as Prof Tim Bale has called it, the ‘full one-eighty’). To some extent, each case is different, even if the media would like us to believe it all adds up to the same backtracking.
Take, for example, former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was a staunch advocate of nuclear energy until March 2011, when the Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred. Following Fukushima, Merkel undertook a dramatic policy U-turn. Having extended the lifetime of nuclear power plants for an additional 14 years, Merkel went on to become a vocal proponent of a phase-out plan, citing the risks associated with nuclear energy and the Fukushima accident as the reason for her change of heart. Merkel, then, is a clear example of a leader responding to a changed context, and meaningfully shifting their outlook on an important policy issue. Contrast this with a comparatively less significant issue like Digital ID, and a decision not to implement a policy only really committed to in a statement ahead of a party conference.
Returning to Starmer, then, each of the shifts discussed earlier might be best explained as a part of the latter group, and perhaps even as part of the normal process of refining, pausing, and developing policy – just played out in the public domain. Take for example the post-Budget hoo-ha over the covid-era business rate discount reduction that hit the pub trade and caused an outcry. The apparent U-turn saw a relatively minor policy change mitigated with a relief package announced in January 2026. Without getting into the weeds, this was perhaps little more than the usual post-budget shenanigans of a government, taking with one hand and giving back with another (often after a vocal campaign). This can be filed alongside the notorious pasty tax debacle when in 2012 Chancellor George Osborne announced in his Budget that the 20% VAT rate would apply to hot takeaway food, including Cornish pasties and sausage rolls. The climbdown after a sustained outcry involved a redefinition of a ‘hot pasty’ to avoid any additional VAT.
While more politically significant, reversals on the two-child benefit cap, winter fuel payments and PIP eligibility under the present government were the result of internal party pressure rather than a profound change in policy position and a major U-turn of the Merkel or Heath variety. These moves were more about balancing the budget and managing discontent among backbench Labour MPs than they were about changing the direction of the government. As a result, it was perhaps unsurprising when some of these only partially formed policies hit the skids so quickly.
The local council election setback is a different kind of reversal again, coming as it did as a result of a threat of legal challenge. This was very much a forced change of plan. There were plenty of sound reasons for delaying elections for councils that were soon to be abolished, but it is never a good look for a government to shelve elections, even at local level. Consequently, even among the myriad of different so-called U-turns of this Labour government, we can see the real variety which lies behind such decisions. The unifying factor, it seems, is how these decisions are represented to the public.
The optics
So, many of these examples would fall into the normal business of government whereby policy is paused, kicked into the long grass, mitigated by other measures and so on. They would not amount to a wholesale change in policy direction as with Ted Heath in 1972, or more recently with the likes of Angela Merkel. Labour’s broad economic goals and policy priorities remain; it is just some of the levers at its disposal have been stymied. A change in taxation commitments would be a proper reversal, having pledged that ‘we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT’ in their 2024 election manifesto. Reversing a clear manifesto commitment is a different ball game, and explains why in October 2024, when the Chancellor was scrambling around for funds, she got into such a tautological bind attempting to claim that the employer NI rise still met the tax pledges.
Altering positions on policies seems common when in office, so is it such a bad thing? One answer may be located less in sound policymaking but rather in public relations itself. As it turns out, polling by YouGov shows the public may not be too put off by U-turns (real or imagined). Despite political opponents raging, the public often recognise that a government may have listened, and they may even gain some credit for changing tack. One of the few academic studies (by Mohamad Nasr and Emma Hoes in 2023) in this area qualified this by suggesting that political trust can alleviate the negative consequences of policy switching. It may indeed be worth any short term hit to ‘scrape the barnacles from the boat’ – a phrase used by Conservative pollster Lynton Crosby to describe the shedding of unpopular policies in order to focus on core messages. Labour backbenchers will be relieved that policies they have had to promote and defend have been dropped to make room for core messages. After all, as one minister commented in January 2026: ‘U-turns aren’t optimal but they’re preferable if you need to move on from policies which are high salience and low approval. Is it better to scrape the barnacles off the boat than stick with unpopular decisions? Yes.’
Policy making and the Labour government
Beyond the political noise about flip-flopping Starmer, lists of days until reversal, and jibes from political opponents, there are legitimate questions about the policy making process within this government. If the Prime Minister is plucking a policy from nowhere to slip into a speech (as with Digital ID) then pausing the process not long after, it indicates that little groundwork has been done. More concerning still is a policy change which occurs further down the line and requires far greater remedial action to reverse. This would indicate that due diligence (in both political and economic terms) has not been undertaken, as with the reversals over winter fuel or council elections.
Mohamad Nasr and Emma Hoes make a clear division in types of U-turns. Many of the policy shifts listed here can be regarded as strategic U-turns, largely made because of political calculations of varying degrees. The more important ones are the principled U-turns made because of external events that force a change of direction. The first type may have much less long-term resonance but short-term political damage, while the second may prompt more significant long term public policy impact (such as Merkel on nuclear or Johnson on lockdowns). For all the talk of U-turns, the Prime Minister is yet to have to consider a significant principled U-turn and do an abrupt ‘one-eighty’. If that happens, with trust in his government and personal leadership so low, he will undoubtedly struggle to bring voters along.
Mark Bennister.
Mark Bennister is an experienced academic researching comparative political leadership, prime ministerial power, governance, public policy, and accountability in parliament. He is a Visiting Reader at Queen Mary, University of London, an Affiliate Research Fellow at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge, and Honorary Senior Fellow, University of Lincoln.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.