Starmer has announced the Border Security Command in replacement of the Rwanda asylum plan and a National Violent Disorder Programme in response to the 2024 riots, as well as reforms to workers' rights.

[33] In February 2010, Starmer announced the CPS's decision to prosecute three Labour MPs and a Conservative peer for offences relating to false accounting in the aftermath of the parliamentary expenses scandal, who were all found guilty.

[39] When Jimmy Savile's sexual abuse crimes were exposed in 2012, Starmer said amid the subsequent scandal that "It was like a dam had bust and people rightfully wanted to know why he had been allowed to get away with it for so long.

[64][65] He indicated he would continue with the Labour policy of scrapping tuition fees as well as pledging "common ownership" of rail, mail, energy and water companies, and called for ending outsourcing in the NHS, local government and the justice system.

[66] Starmer was declared the winner of Labour's leadership contest on 4 April 2020, defeating his rivals, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy, with 56.2 per cent of the vote in the first round.

[74] In August 2022 the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, found that Starmer had breached the MPs' code of conduct eight times by failing to register interests on eight occasions.

[84][85][86] As Labour Leader Starmer focused on repositioning the Party away from the Left and the controversies that affected Corbyn's leadership, with promises of economic stability, tackling small-boat crossings, cutting NHS waiting times and "rebuilding the NHS", worker rights enrichment, energy independence and infrastructure development, tackling crime, improving education and training, reforming public services, renationalising the railway network, and recruiting 6,500 teachers.

Labour entered the general election with a large lead over the Conservatives in opinion polls, and the potential scale of the party's victory remained a topic of discussion throughout the campaign.

[108] Promising wealth creation together with "pro-business and pro-worker" policies,[109] the manifesto also pledged giving 16-year-olds the vote, reforming the House of Lords, and to tax private schools, with money generated going into improving state education.

Our work is urgent and we begin it today.Other world leaders, including Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau, as well as Blair and Brown, congratulated Starmer upon his appointment as prime minister.

[125] One of his first acts was to declare the Rwanda asylum plan "dead": the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, would establish a Border Security Command to tackle smuggling gangs which facilitate illegal migrant crossings over the English Channel.

[135][136][137] Domestically, Starmer said that his primary concerns would be economic growth, reforming the planning system, infrastructure, energy, healthcare, education, childcare, and strengthening workers' rights, as set out in Labour's 2024 election manifesto.

[157] The seven Labour MPs suspended for six months were John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Apsana Begum, Imran Hussain, Zarah Sultana, and Rebecca Long-Bailey, all of whom now sit as independents.

[160] Starmer later wrote amidst the riots across England and Northern Ireland following the stabbing that those who had "hijacked the vigil for the victims" had "insulted the community as it grieves" and that rioters would feel the full force of the law.

[166] Starmer rejected calls from some MPs – including Labour MP Diane Abbott, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Conservative Dame Priti Patel – to recall parliament to Westminster.

[170][171][172] The new Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, accused the previous government of leaving a £21.9bn "black hole", and announced on 29 July that certain winter fuel payments would be scrapped for around 10 million pensioners.

[199][200] On 27 August 2024, Starmer and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced talks towards revising a Germany-UK co-operation agreement covering areas including defence, energy security, science and technology.

[203] In November 2024, Starmer met Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro and told him he wanted to build a 'consistent, durable, respectful' relationship with China.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced the UK Government's suspension of 30 out of 350 arms export licences to Israel, affecting equipment such as parts for fighter jets, helicopters and drones.

[211][212][213][214] Some commentators, judging that Starmer has led his party towards the political centre in order to improve its electability, attempt to liken what he has accomplished in this regard with Tony Blair's development of New Labour.

He has pledged to abolish the House of Lords, which he describes as "indefensible", during the first term of a Labour government and to replace it with a directly-elected Assembly of the Regions and Nations, the details of which will be subject to scrutiny by public consultation.

Endorsed and promoted by Starmer, Brown's report recommended the abolition of the House of Lords, extending greater powers to local councils and mayors, and deeper devolution to the countries of the United Kingdom.

[229] Labour's 2024 election manifesto committed to the removal of the remaining hereditary peers from the chamber, setting a mandatory retirement age of 80, and beginning a consultation on replacing the Lords with a "more representative" body.

[233][234] Starmer has ruled out allowing transgender people to self-identify, has stated that trans women should not have the right to use women-only spaces,[235] and has also said he will continue the block on the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in Scotland.

[239][240] After the murder of an American man named George Floyd by the police officer Derek Chauvin in the United States, against which numerous protests were held in the Western world, Starmer supported the Black Lives Matter movement, and took the knee alongside his deputy, Angela Rayner.

[251][252] In December 2023, Starmer used Margaret Thatcher, as well as Tony Blair and Clement Attlee, as examples of how politicians can effect "meaningful change" by acting "in service of the British people, rather than dictating to them".

[253][254] Starmer has described the Labour Party as "deeply patriotic" and credits its most successful leaders, Attlee, Harold Wilson, and Blair, for policies "rooted in the everyday concerns of working people".

[264] In an interview during the 2024 general election campaign, Starmer said that his biggest fear about becoming prime minister was how it may impact on his children, due to their "difficult ages" and how it would be easier if they were younger or older.

[271] From 1986 to 1987, Starmer served as the editor of Socialist Alternatives, a Trotskyist radical magazine produced by an organisation under the same name, which represented the British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT).

[276] Having received the Bar Council's Sydney Elland Goldsmith Award in 2005[277] for his outstanding contribution to pro bono work in challenging the death penalty in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, and the Caribbean,[278] he was elected an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford in 2022.