Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces big challenges fixing Britain

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has begun work trying to fix Britain's problems, from the stagnant economy to crumbling National Health Service.

LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has avoided triumphalism in the days after his crushing electoral victory. Instead, he said the challenge of fixing this wounded country would be a daunting one — with any successes gradual and hard-won.

During his first speech outside No. 10 Downing St. on Friday, he commented on what he called “weariness in the heart of” Britain after 14 years of Conservative Party rule, which had drained “away the hope, the spirit and the belief in a better future.”

Britain’s ailments are many: stagnant economic growth and wages, high child poverty and homelessness, and crumbling health care and public services. The prisons are overflowing, some local governments have gone bankrupt, and the rivers and seas flow with sewage pumped out by privatized utility companies.

Starmer, 61, says his mix of progressivism and pragmatism is the answer to this sense of brokenness. But there are large gaps in his explanation for how that might be achieved.

Starmer enters the famous black door of No. 10 Downing St. on Friday.Tom Skipp / Bloomberg via Getty Images“It’s going to be a difficult start,” said Anand Menon, director of UK in a Changing Europe, a London-based think tank. “They are going to have to say, ‘This won’t be easy, this will take time, don’t hold your breath.’”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/prime-minister-keir-starmer-broken-britain-rcna160667

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