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Keir Starmer has inherited a broken system. Benjamin Cremel - WPA Pool/Getty Images
“Who is gripping?” With these three words, the late Jeremy Heywood ruled Whitehall. The demand would stir his aides into action: calls would be made, emails sent, each carrying the imprimatur of the Cabinet Secretary and with it, the person he served: the Prime Minister. This was how the system worked. And yet, with Heywood’s passing, so too, it seems, has the grip on the system.
The old system was far from ideal, of course. Successive Prime Ministers came to depend on Heywood’s personal authority in a way that now seems unhealthy. He may have been a skilled courtier, but a perception has grown since his death that Heywood had built a machine that only he could manipulate.
As a result, Keir Starmer has inherited a system that is broken; the state can no longer corral the government machine into action. Everyone in Whitehall says the same thing: the authority of the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, is shot, and with it his department. And this matters. Without an organising authority, the state stands inert, propelled only by its own momentum.
In its place, No. 10 has become even more important — the last institution able to impose its authority on the patchwork of governmental principalities that make up the British state. And yet, No 10 itself is not fit for purpose either — a creaking Georgian terrace without institutional knowledge or technological wherewithal. As such, the Treasury dominates Britain’s remaining source of institutional power and strength.
Starmer’s first two months as Prime Minister are testament to this depressing reality. Devoid of any organising narrative, it has allowed itself to be defined instead by the ongoing winter fuel fiasco. And to peer behind the front door of No 10 is to glimpse a situation that is even worse than it might seem.
Since winning power, it has been striking how quickly a sense of factionalism and distrust seems to have taken hold of a team that, before the election, was defined by its sense of collective mission. Back then, everyone was pulling in the same direction. Today, briefings find their way into the press with an alarming regularity: tales of unhappiness, fall outs, power grabs and hierarchical squabbling. Far from being the experienced steady hand who would be able to grip the Whitehall machine with immediate effect, Starmer today looks more like an early Tony Blair who had never worked in government before becoming Prime Minister.
One reason for the briefing wars, according to those involved, is that there were simply not enough jobs in government to go around. As a result, noses have been put out of joint. This, though, is the most benign explanation. Those I spoke to said the briefings were not just from embittered former aides, but reflected a genuinely uneasy atmosphere in No. 10, with a clique forming around Sue Gray on the soft-Left wing of the party and another around “the boys” who have tended to push a more “blue Labour” agenda, focused on the priorities of the working class. Rumours of a division between Gray and Morgan McSweeney, however, are overdone, according to those I spoke with. At the heart of the briefings, therefore, lies a battle to shape the nature of the government — a battle which should have been settled long before the assumption of power.
In Jonathan Powell’s memoir of his time as Blair’s chief of staff, The New Machiavelli, he quotes the observation that new leaders must learn quickly on the job to “defend what Fortune has placed in their lap”. He warns that in modern democratic societies there is no choice but to move quickly and boldly in the first 100 days, for this will define much of the rest of their time in office. “A new leader,” he writes, “has to have prepared in Opposition for that sprint in government.”
As Leader of the Opposition, Starmer seemed to know what he was doing. He had hired Gray directly from the Cabinet Office so that he could hit the ground running. Gray knew Whitehall intimately, warts and all, and surely would have formulated a plan to deal with the gaping hole of authority now sitting at the centre of the British state. So why, two months in, has nothing changed? Long-talked-about plans to create a beefed-up “Department of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet” have — so far — failed to materialise.
Part of the reason for this is the hangover from the Truss catastrophe. Having seen what happened following her sudden removal of officials such as the Treasury’s Tom Scholar, Starmer and his team are determined to avoid any such mistakes. However, the danger is now one of overcorrection. Decisions must be made, the centre gripped and the government’s central purpose explained.
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SubscribeAll fair and insightful, from what one can gather. Reaffirms how dreadful the inheritance has been. Two months school report is not what he’ll be judged on though. Thus for now this is largely fodder, albeit important fodder, for those interested in the machinations of Govt and what one has to do to get things done.
That’s hardly an insightful comment, though. Aren’t you just crossing your fingers and hoping “something will turn up” – a bit like Starmer himself? This is all just so typical of the left, who think having “good” intentions is enough. The same can, of course, be said for the lefty-leaning former Tory government whose acting upon intentions were conspicuous by their absence.
The record time in which Starmer’s regime has started to fall apart following a landslide will go down in history. Even Boris Johnson got as far as getting Brexit over the technical line before Covid hit. The “100 days” referred to by the writer are turning into an unmitigated disaster, with worse to come.
Factionalism and distrust in Number 10? How remarkable, I’d never have guessed.
Not something you’d expect from the Left!
Starmer does not have the temperament for leadership. He is somewhat neurotic (peevish whrn challenged) and given to full freeze mode (watch his eyes bulge and his body move up.and back). Since he can’t.lead by consent, he’s just going to legislate through control. He has the seats, if notrhe mandate, to do it. Sadly the outome will be a more demoralised, polarised society.
Watching his utterly robotic, humourless performance at Question Time this week, when the answer to every question was ‘£20 billion black hole’ delivered in that terrible Billy Bunter voice, was a truly depressing experience. Must we really endure five years of this?
And taking one possible budget decision as an example: removing the pensioners’ free bus pass. These go back at least sixty years if not longer, and were introduced to put bums on seats on otherwise empty buses in off-peak periods. Scrapping them will only deprive pensioners of much-needed freedom: it will have no financial effect whatsoever.
Buses are also warm and places to chat with other people feeling the cold.
“Billy Bunter voice’.
I love it!
The real tension is between Reeves and the unsackable Rayner (the not-so-undercover agent of the Unions/Momentum).
The former is trying to create a balanced budget to attract, not deter, investment, whilst the latter wants to ‘squeeze the rich until their pips squeak‘.
One is a political novice but quietly dignified, the other a street brawler and bully – I’ll let you decide which one is which and who will win.
When Reeves is your best hope, god help us all.
My own conclusion is that Labour are so desperate to distance themselves from the ‘hated Tories’ that they are prone to pull any lever or push any button to make them seem different. That might explain some of their odd choices. They even dreamed up a fantasy £20 billion black hole in the state finances to justify their flailing about – at the same time as spending new money with no clear return.
If Labour were an individual people would be asking if they were bad or mad.
Bad, Mad, and Sad.
Teresa May wanted to change the “hated Tories” image. This failure of the Right to stand up for itself and offer an alternative to collectivism has been one of the most notable political failures of the last 20 years
Teresa May has been one of the most notable political failures of the last 20 years
And it’s a very crowded field…
Yes and Starmer is coming up on the rails to overtake her in double quick time.
Too late. He’s completely blown it already.
Very interesting at two levels.
First that this is a crazy to run anything- far less a whole country. Regardless of your politics no sensible person would run any organisation in such a dysfunctional top down structure.
Second it is pretty apparent that having achieved power the Labour leadership completely lack any vision. All they keep saying is “things are worse than we thought, tough decisions, take a long time ” . Code for “we have not done our research, we have no defined plan and basically we haven’t a clue what to do next week never mind next year”.
It wouldn’t have taken much research to discover that reducing immigration, in an intelligent way, would alleviate many of the current problems: that abandoning the NET Zero Agenda, (especially if the Hydrocarbon Industry was allowed to recover and Renewables were paused), would invigorate industry, creating jobs, and, heaven forbid, wealth; and not just promoting STEM, but constructing an education path that supplied appropriate skills for STEM industries.
The problem is that the current cabinet, and the last one, live and decide on the data created by bureaucrats that haven’t experienced a ‘real job’, in industry – where the country’s wealth is created.
Yes, a small country that’s getting poorer every year really cannot afford to waste billions on a vanity project like Net Zero. Everyone knows that all it will do is impoverish us without having any impact on the climate at all. But hey, it ‘sets an example, doncha know’.
What!?
What’s needed is a Just Stop Net Zero to bring the M25 to a halt until Milliband is gone.
I totally agree with you. But how to stop it all? The momentum can’t now be resisted. For every one person on UnHerd, there are thousands of people who just believe that the planet is going to explode in 2050, if we don’t make these stupid changes. Nobody even wants to talk about it because there is nothing to talk about.
I am very close to a primary school teacher who bases lessons around the theory of a potential climate disaster. When I questioned this she was amazed that there was anything to discuss – she thought that I had gone crazy! Each new generation just cements the idea into a rigid structure, one which can’t even be questioned. In fact, if a group of serious people did any questioning, I think that Starmer would use his thought police to close it down.
Usually, those that hold the Established Views defend them by responding to the Rabble’s critical questions, and everyone pores over the result. Then it’s whoever can find a subtle, or not subtle, problem with the defence continues the conversation.
Science is a mode of enquiry, requiring dialogue, free speech, and for all parties able to understand the questions asked. So too is Business.
The problem is that the Rabble have taken the citadel, yet they haven’t behaved properly, by responding to questions generated during informed discussion. Their military wing, the pressure groups, some TV channels, and some ‘enthusiastic’ individuals that push the limits of credulity don’t understand the basic Science involved, so any valid suggestion is rejected, without any discussion, just animosity. It leaves the Informed perplexed: if they cannot communicate, everyone will have to wait for the pain to increase until communications resume.
The problem is that the remedy will include building a great deal of new infrastructure, and the supply chains, themselves, and skillsets will need to be rebuilt, when we have realised we are a lot poorer than we were And that will take years to rectify. We also need a clear out of all those experts that ‘just watched it happen’, and find some with the appropriate knowledge and experience: again, that will be quite a challenge.
It helps to have arrived in a new job with a vision and a plan. Where is it ?
Does the author mean, ‘griping’?
Yes, I wondered about that, too.
Thought this too. Until, a few sentences down, Hayward is quoted as asking “whose got a grip?” Or words to this effect.
The article is so riddled with errors he could have meant ‘porridge’. His point comes across, but the article seems to have been typed on his phone on the last train home yesterday.
This article reinforces everything that Sam Freedman’s book Failed State says about the way in which UK government does not work. But the author appears to believe that the answer is more centralisation, even though we have more than a century of experience telling us that does and can not work. A complex state cannot be run by an Office of the Prime Minister.
Further, the article demonstrates something even more depressing about the state of UK politics. It is pure political gossip. No substance. No understanding of the limits on state action. Just a retelling of who says what to whom.
The overwhelming issue facing any UK government is: what do we stop doing? Governments over the last two decades have pretended, especially to the media, that they can tackle any issue that either journalists or lobby groups get upset about. But that is patently impossible within current resources of people, money & political consent.
So what we get are nonsensical policies to ban advertising of junk food – who knows what that is – online or before the evening watershed. Lots of people waste large amounts of time trying to write & interpret regulations that won’t have the slightest impact on the problem of obesity. This is all displacement activity for governments that are clueless and utterly incompetent.
All the signs are that the current government is doomed, both because of the personality of the Prime Minister and the inclinations of his party. Since any outsider can read the runes, why would anyone commit money to underpin economic growth without being heavily bribed to do so? That is not a viable way of turning the ship of state around.
But the author appears to believe that the answer is more centralisation, even though we have more than a century of experience telling us that does and can not work.
In a nutshell.
The ship of state.
M’eh.
The ship of state is a danger. The state’s duty is, principally, to protect its citizens from foreign invasion together witha few other tasks that allow its citizens to live as they choose.
But making sure there are enough soldiers, that property rights are protected and people are saved from destitution is a bit boring. The ship of state sails to the Land of Milk and Honey.
There are too many managers lacking in the basic knowledge of what they are managing. Just look at the NET Zero catastrophe: and yet it’s run by those WITHOUT any STEM knowledge. If they had any knowledge, they would stop it! If they knew Newton’s Laws, and had worked out how poor windmills are at supplying a reliable power supply, they would act: but they don’t know, they have only been told. And that is the difference.
Rory Stewart has complained that there can be too much information to assimilate, but that’s what happens when you are a jack of all trades and only talking to others with a similar problem, a lack of experience in the discipline required.
Fundamentally the government’s agenda just contains too many internal contradictions. Economic growth and net zero? Nope, it’s either/or. Stop the boats and have closer ties with Europe. Not doable. Fix the NHS and keep the doctors onside? Can’t be done. Fix housing and maintain high levels of immigration? A fantasy … the list goes on and on.
Most importantly, Labour cannot tackle the incompetence and soft corruption at the heart of the British state because Labour is the party of the state and its apparatchiks. We’re in for a difficult five years.
Only five years? With Germany suffering a similar malady, that will affect the EU, it’s going to take a while: our country still hasn’t got over winning two world wars. Everyone, including the elites, need to realise noone owes the country a living and everything needs to adapt.
Our universities are still churning out delusional graduates, that haven’t realised that a career isn’t just waiting for them, “oven ready’, to coin a phrase. And nonproductive jobs will have to go.
Unfortunately Starmer is a typical do-gooder, non-entity who fails to realize the negative consequence of his actions and the internal contradictions within his belief system. The only good thing one can say about Starmer is that he has a very attractive wife (which would no doubt be viewed as a male chauvinist comment, but the fact is that it’s true).
And *this* is the primary benefit of Brexit – no more blaming Brussels to deflect from our own decrepit governance. Brexit forces us to confront the real problems.
When among your first moves is to jail people who dared to notice that unfettered immigration is a problem, you’re doing govt wrong. When you elevate the illegal over the tax-paying citizen, you’re doing govt wrong. No one is going to blame Starmer for failing to fix an already broken system, but they will rightly blame him for making it worse.
Elected officials are obsolete. Administrative state rules supreme. Personal authority and responsibility are now liabilities. Don’t blame the dead guy for running an effective system.
David Starkey has said that Blair destroyed the Crown on Parliament, with many decisions outsourced, so overall responsibility is diffused, as is accountability.
Might we forget the clean energy bit, which seems to be financially, economically and politically irresponsible, leaving us dependent for the foreseeable future on energy imports? The costs of green energy are imprecise, but already known to be expensive, so the rise in household energy bills (unless subsidised by taxpayers) when added to the axed winter fuel allowance will be substantial. It’s a no-win situation; either you pay more for energy, or you keep the cost down and pay the same amount more in tax. And the cost of improving infrastructure to bring “clean” power to the nation will add a huge chunk to the so-called £23bn black hole. And that’s before the government decides to host AI infrastructure…
This can be said for practically any Western government leadership and their parties. Inept, incompetent, no real-world experience, just mediocre at best. Controlled by their handlers, er, donors, and by the party apparatus and financed by the “elites of finance, tech, and media. This is the end product when those three entities buy everything. Not going to end well.
I’m not sure the country will manage five years of his banal comments. Clearly his lack lustre cabinet is incompetent and there is a whole stream of newbys with no hope of ministerial opportunity.
I simply find it hard to believe that Britain is an over centralised country with a weak centre. I see it as an over devolved country with third-rate political leaders. Scottish, Welsh, London and regional devolution have brought no obvious benefits. Indeed, Scotland and Wales have been patently misgoverned since devolution was introduced. All we have is amateur local politicians, more civil servants and whacko political advisers.
As for the centre. There has been a woeful lack of firm government since at least 2010, with the present government looking set to follow the trend.
I fear the worst.
Alan Sked.
I was wondering when articles like this would appear. I thought it would be within days of the change of government. I’m astonished it has taken this long. They might try collective Cabinet government, i.e., follow the rules. Whatever else you could say about Thatcher’s and Blair’s Governments, they were not “great”. Quite the reverse.
The rapid, wholesale promise-breaking by new governments is virtually part of the constitution nowadays. Hence the subdued popular response. But then, the public wants unlimited increases in public spending and no tax increases (unless they fall on other people), and has little sense of impending national bankruptcy. Can democracy produce politicians able to deal with that?
A good analysis. I am so disappointed in Labour: in 70+ days the acts which stand out are (1) remove Winter Fuel Allowance, (2) pay off train drivers. This in a context of repeating that state finances are terrible – maybe they are but it suggests impotence by HMG.
There are so many things HMG could do at little cost e.g. change Town & Country planning laws. Labour said they will do it, but so far no communication of when & how. Ditto NHS reforms (which will cost in short term). It is beginning to feel like the inaction of the previous government.
I know it cannot be changed overnight, but HMG could keep us informed by periodic statements of progress.
“The British state today is in desperate need of reform. The country is taxed more than ever, but receives less in return. The economy is stagnant, living standards only just emerging from their worst squeeze in living memory and the NHS no longer seemingly able to cope with the demands placed upon it.” All of this is quite correct. However the idea that the state will reform itself is ludicrous.
Thatcher and Blair may have taken years to get into their stride but they both accelerated out of the blocks. Within 5 months of taking power Thatcher had removed capital controls, making Britain vulnerable to a collapse in its currency and forcing the country to earn its living in the world. Within days of coming to power, Chancellor Brown had made the Bank of England independent, making the economy serve the interests of the financial markets. Both moves were seen as radical at the time, Brown’s in particular as it came as a surprise to everyone in the financial markets. Starmer and Reeves seem not to understand that, if they tax the rich before introducing capital controls, the profits on the rise in British asset prices will simply be booked and the profits moved offshore.
I hope he does well – the UK needs a decent administration after the Tory Götterdämmerung – but I’m not hopeful.
How could Starmer, Lammy and the UK ambassador to the US ever have expected to receive approval to use long range missiles against Russia, and hence initiate a hot NATO/Russia conflict? Unless there are some significant changes on the Ukrainian battlefield, and material changes in diplomatic positions which are currently not even whispered about in the public domain, it should be obvious that this kind of request to the US would end in embarrassing failure.
Similarly, where does Starmer realistically hope to get to in discussions with France, Germany and Ireland on resetting the UK relationship with the EU? Without radical policy change, any changes can only be marginal at best.
Equally disappointing is the fact that the Labour manifesto contained only bland aspirational statements, and little substantive policy detail. This may have been useful in not giving the Tories lines of attack, but anything that this administration tries to do is now something that the electorate have not voted for, and may ultimately be the sword that decapitates Labour at the next election, not least given the shallow and unstable basis of their parliamentary majority.
With negativity like this, it’s no wonder the country doesn’t get any better.
I’m not sure what people were expecting. We’ve had years of shambolic government from the May Bot to Bad Boris to Hapless Truss. At least we’ve got rid of that lot. The Tory apologists and moaning pensioners who can feel the gravy train disappearing deserve to be disappointed by this new administration, who are naturally still finding their feet.
Well. It seems like Sir Humphrey doesn’t feel the need to say “Yes, Minister” any more. He just ignores the PM and Cabinet and does what he wanted all along.
Gormenghast was supposed to be satirising the Forbidden City in the last days of imperial China, but now we recognise it as Whitehall. A vast intricate musical brocade of cross government interests, run by eunuchs.
It’s not the apparent disfunction in the government machinery that has made disastrous decisions such as cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance, suspending export licences to Israel, poor energy policies and cronyism. Starmer is capable of stuffing these things up on his own.
Far from being buffeted by events Starmer has made political choices which have created problems he didn’t need to have. It was his choice to immediately commit £11B to overseas climate change; it was his decision to award inflation busting pay rises to various public sector workers and train drivers thereby creating a “blackhole”; it was his decision to treat genuine concerns from poor communities as “far-right” extremism and lock up people who really didn’t need to be in prison thereby exacerbating the prison problem, which was being discussed in the last Parliament; it was his decision to remove the WFA without considering the impact on lower income pensioners; it was his decision to make political appointments to the Civil Service; and it was most definitely his decision to accept donations in return for access to No.10. So, no, I don’t blame anyone but Starmer for the mess he is making of things
Reading the third to last paragraph of this depressing article, Starmer should concentrate, indeed focus on, the promise to introduce devolution to England. Gordon Brown prepared an excellent paper for him on this idea, there are many experienced individuals who could advise him on such a mission and in the various tiers of local government there is surely the expertise to assist him achieve his claimed ambition. That is, of course, if he has it within himself to relinquish the power and centralising authority with which he evidently seems comfortable.
Tom Scholar hubristically thought it was okay to run the Treasury while WFH in France. He deserved to go.
I’m sure he’s perfectly happy now as Chairman of Nomura Europe.
A lot of words missing the point that Starmer is a rotten apple, to the core and everything he touches turns to decay. The first evidence being his choice of Chancellor whose awfulness puts the other rotters in the shade. Those who support him are the sort who’d put square wheels on cars on the grounds we never had those before.
Jailing people for saying things with which you disagree or find untasteful is a sign of this government’s direction and intention.
They should have no trouble at all in getting things done, as the Civil Service and the rest of the institutions are on the same team. Starmer is their man, put there by then and is one of them..
But the Labour amateurs don’t know what they are doing. They still think that their day comprises of cosy interviews with Sky or the BBC or C4, indulging in some Tory bashing.
Useless. Complacent. Nasty. Lost. Bent.