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It should not be this bad, this early. Nowhere near. And yet it is — it really is. For the Labour Party, barely two months into government, preparing for conference, it is time to panic.
While there is an understandable instinct to downplay the accounts of Downing Street infighting over who gets paid what and who sits where, on this occasion, the reality is worse than the briefings. Inside No.10 the atmosphere is grim: factious, paranoid and — crucially — un-led. The briefings pouring out are not merely froth, but the scum on the surface caused by the panicked churn of an unprepared government underneath. The scale of the disharmony is unprecedented so soon.
Some of the unhappiness is residual from opposition, when a sense of distrust seeped into Labour HQ as Gray attempted to assert more control in preparation for government. The smallest hint of a negative briefing would throw the operation into panic: fingers would be pointed, information withheld and the circle around Starmer tightened. Loyal Labour aides suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of an invisible divide. They resented it — and the person they blamed for building it. Yet there was still a collective mission binding them together: victory.
Since entering government, the situation has deteriorated with extraordinary speed. And rather than dreaming big thoughts about how it will succeed where others failed, No.10 is already drifting acrimoniously into the kind of cynical weariness usually associated with a second term government.
Part of the story is certainly political: Labour’s grim inheritance has forced it to face the kind of “difficult decisions” few in the party want to impose. And the smell of cronyism following the huge donations from the millionaire peer, Waheed Alli, has also been dispiriting. But speaking to those who have witnessed the disorder within No.10, even this account glosses over the scale of the problems affecting the Starmer operation.
Whether Sue Gray is paid a few thousand pounds more than the Prime Minister or a few thousand pounds less does not change the structural challenges facing Britain, which remain extraordinary in their scale and depth. Tackling these requires a government united behind a coherent strategy with capable individuals supported by a system that can deliver what is necessary. Little of that exists at the moment. Those I spoke to told me there was a startling lack of togetherness in the team around Starmer. Each of the main figures close to him — Sue Gray, Chief of Staff; Matthew Doyle, communications director; Morgan McSweeney, campaign director; and Vidhya Alakeson, political director — are impressive, but they are not a band of brothers who have each other’s back. Instead, they reflect a group of individuals, united by their personal loyalty to the Prime Minister more than the coherence of their politics.
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SubscribeWhat do you expect from people who never believed in anything, same can be set about the Tories as well. That also can be said about the Democrats and the Republicans in America. For people like these, politics is a end on to itself, not a means to an end. It’s all about exploiting problems, not fixing them. Some of them even go as far to create or exaggerate problems to suit their wants. For these people, political positions are just really tactical methods of achieving power, its not about principle.
Someone came up with the perfect phrase for this: “problem selling”. As opposed to actual problem solving. The problem seller has a vested interest is perpetuating the problem.
I’m not sure there are any problem solvers left in Whitehall or Parliament.
Very good point.
I’ll enjoy repeating the phrase “problem seller”, it sums it up
Brilliant.
It wasn’t mine (sadly). Found it on an excellent UnHerd article by Gurwinder Bhargal in January 2024: https://unherd.com/2024/01/33-concepts-to-survive-the-year/ . Original credit to Boyan Slat : https://x.com/BoyanSlat/status/1485615991660949508 .
If you’re not aware, there is a company called Despair Inc, who mostly make satirical corporate (de)motivation posters and paraphernalia. One such poster is titled Consulting, and reads as follows:
“If you’re not part of the solution, there is plenty of money to be made from prolonging the problem.”
“… politics is a end on to itself, not a means to an end”
When you study Politics at university, what do you expect? 🙂
And so many MPs have, or History, which has plenty of ‘Politics of the Past’.
Worse still is the number of lawyers.
Accountants count the dead bodies on the battlefield; lawyers decide how and where they should be buried.
All the big parties, then! Perhaps there is something inevitable about it? We might back the small parties with principles, but of course they have to become big before they achieve power.
Should we get real about what we are expecting from our governments? They won’t lead us into some paradise and fix our problems, however much they promise on the campaign trail. I don’t really hold that against them. We just need a management team who can just about hold things together and the freedom to vote them out when we get tired of them.
So the question remains: who does have the opportunity to lead change in society?
When Keir Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions, he oversaw a department that wilfully ignored the mass rape and exploitation of underage girls.
Did anyone, apart from callous leftists intent only on power, think he’d be any better in an even more important and exposed role?
He was a means to an end. The end has already arrived. Who knows where we go from here? We’re in Gray territory.
Yes. Now Starmer is claiming he didn’t know about the file passed to the CPS by the Met in 2008 after Mohamed al Fayed r@ped a 15-year old girl on his boardroom table. Are we really expected to believe that the DPP was not involved in the decision to memory-hole a case concerning such a prominent individual?
It seems the “crisis of competence” is very real.
If they ever do get a hold of themselves, I hope that removing Ed Miliband is priority number one.
I hope that Lammy and Milliband are removed at the same time. Both are dreadfully dangerous.
That’s very true Edward, they are both frighteningly dangerous. They do not speak for Britain.
I imagine they’ll both be toast in the first reshuffle. Along with Ange.
Sadly I fear not, they are the visible manifestation of the hard left hiding in plain sight
I do think he has swing the party right, just its perception, the left wing hatreds are all coming out with their plans for education, the countryside and energy
At least a generation has learnt that what socialists do and what they say are poles apart
I’m facing the second raid on my pension in my career, it will probably lower my expectations of retirement permanently
Meanwhile the money will be wasted on vanity projects or venal gerrymandering to keep the unions on their donors onside
Something very odd going on,all over the world,everywhere. A dark energy is abroad,seeking whom it may devour.
It’s those pesky Lizards in space JB.
It’s the lions (1 Peter v.8).
Those in pwer appear to object to independent individuals and want people to give up their freedom to join the collective. The Collective is wonderful for those who lack the spirit to be individuals. In Star Trek terms the Collective appear to be The Borg.
Or you could argue that the current political global establishments have run their course and populism has re-awakened, for good or ill.
For whatever reason, we have a political and technocratic class across the west that is unfit for purpose. They bathe themselves in luxury beliefs and develop dreadful policy based on those beliefs. IDK why this is happening simultaneously in multiple countries.
Recently spoke to someone who was descendent of the Marcher Lords on the Welsh border. They were extremely competent warriors and knew how lead.
If one looks at the cathedrals and castles they built they certainly were good at construction management.
The Marcher Lords were a ruling class who ruled.
The trajectory of “progressivism” and the neo-Marxist ideologies associated with it were successful in entrenching themselves in our best universities. Now, a generation that has been educated in, and believe in these backwards anti-civilization woke ideologies have come to power, and the western world is falling. Democracy is being replaced with totalitarianism by those who claim to be the champions of democracy. You are seeing a turn to populism because the people are tired of the nonsense and not as stupid as the politicians and the media think that they are.
A spot on synopsis. As you say, the rot started decades ago and is now finally achieving its aims.
I remember reading twenty years ago the predictions of students of long cycles and various mathematical models claiming we should expect a major societal crisis in the mid to late 2020s. At the time I mocked but so far, year by year, it has been going their way: bitter popular divides over culture wars and other issues, ever more cynical and unproductive behaviour in the political class and the loss of any widespread agreement over the core mission of the US, Britain or the West.
I do not know with any certainty if we are heading towards some major internal conflict to be resolved either peacefully as in the 1960s or violently as in the run up to the American civil war – or whether the cycles and models are right or merely lucky – but it does indeed feel like some “dark energy is abroad”.
Perhaps a societal crisis is necessary to allow the birth of new institutions, a new politics and a new and improved political class better adjusted to twenty first century challenges. Whether Sue Gray is merely a symbol of the last decrepit years of this ancien regime or the midwife of a new order in Whitehall remains to be seen. Either way, this will probably be only part of a wider struggle.
Mr. McTague is a good journalist, and he takes the trouble to talk to people on the inside. He is telling a consistent story: read back over his previous pieces and you’ll see what I mean.
I can see his UnHerd pieces being turned into a book: the rise and fall of Starmer.
The “fall” cannot come soon enough, but like the Tories there is no one of any consequence to replace him.
The Tories made a mistake having Cameron as leader, and Labour got the wrong Miliband.
There wasn’t a right Miliband ! Both equally useless.
Rumour has it that the ‘wrong brother’ set up Ed, and then slipped into a very well paid job.
Part of the problem is the shape and nature of the political system itself, which, in the modern environment, seems to be optimised for career politicians of the lowest moral character and competency.
The system was fine ~400 years ago when it was created, but like most systems and traditions, its effectiveness has declined over the years as new technologies and cultural ideologies have emerged. However, one of our biggest challenges is that while most people would raise an eyebrow at a doctor proposing a 400-year-old method for fixing a broken leg, they seem content to rely on a governing political system from the same era.
There is a need for a transformation of the system of governance in this country – one that is optimised for a different quality of leader. To achieve this without coming completely off the rails, a form of coppicing or controlled burn is in order.
Because the fact is, as most people in the country are already feeling, we are dangerously close to the wheels coming off the whole thing in a manner over which we will have no control. And when that happens – as history has repeatedly taught us – all bets are off.
The cruel irony of this is that this kind of system reset is impossible – because it requires the people in power to voluntarily redesign a system that they currently benefit from. And turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
So folks, we may need to strap ourselves in and let go of the wheel, because any illusion of control over where we’re headed is just that – an illusion. Without a deliberate and collective effort to reform our governing systems, we are simply passengers on a journey dictated by outdated mechanisms, destined to repeat the same downward spiral of incompetence, hurtling toward an uncertain future.
A future shaped not by our conscious choices but by the inertia of the past.
To say that the system was fine 400 years ago is to say that we should be ruled by a land-owning gentry who would hang someone for killing a rabbit – even if they were starving. If you had been alive then and you had typed your comment on UnHerd, you would be facing a swift execution. You would have been controlled spiritually by your local parson, who would pass on the measures of the local lord by saying that God wanted you to follow the orders of the gentry.
Since that time we have discovered democracy. But, as I have said many times in these discussions, the definition of democracy is a difficult thing to agree. It is this confusion about the meaning of democracy, which is causing our problems. A hundred years ago, most people voted and the word probably meant ‘the majority’. Since then, people have fought for various things to promote the interest of minorities.
About 50 years ago, Bernard Levin coined the acronym, SIFs – Single Issue Fanatics. As people have found more time for leisure they have embraced special causes, minority causes. There are now so many SIFs that a majority view is no longer apt – there is no longer a majority in anything. UnHerd is a collection of minority views.
The question is, how do you redefine ‘democracy’ to give stability in our modern world. Not possible, I think. So you need a totalitarian-style government, a set of communist ideals and this is what we have. We have given ourselves so much leisure and so little work to fill our day, that we have to design ‘causes’ to fight for and to defend. Arguably, we now need a set of autocrats to control us.
Not so, we had habeas corpus, trial by jury and an increasingly assertive Parliament plus non-conformism. Pretty advanced pluralism I’d say for the times.
The original Democracy did not allow one person one vote. You had to be of a certain status to vote.
I my opinion the minimum age to vote should be 25 . And no one who hasnt worked and/or paid tax in the last 12 months should be allowed a vote. Those who pay the tax should choose the Govt. If you dont do that you end up with idle people spending other peoples money on themselves.
The lack of a police until 1829 meant wealthy could not afford to offend people as they could be easily killed; weapons were common. Elections were boisterous affairs with people being able to throw dead animals an rotten fruit at candidates. Even if people could not vote they could voice their opinion which included upturning the MPs carriage, throwing them in a pond and breaking the windows of their homes.
In summary, the period of 1660 to 1830 was one of boisterous bawdy freedom. Nell Gwynne ( reality ) and Moll Flanders ( fiction )demonstarte the life.
To say that we were fine 400 years ago is probably wrong. We were ruled by the gentry and you could be hanged for stealing a rabbit or deported for petty theft. The local parson also kept people in control by telling them about the wrath of God. Then came Democracy.
The problem today with democracy is agreeing on a definition. When it first came, it probably meant the majority but later it morphed into something different. As people gained more leisure time they took on special minority causes. About 50 years ago Bernard Levin coined the acronym, SIFs – Single Issue Fanatics. Something which is self-explanatory. Today everyone is a SIF. This varies from giving money for the preservation of snow leopards to typing comments for UnHerd.
In the presence of so many SIFs, there is no longer democracy, as we knew it. So, we invited a totalitarian-type government and this is what we have. The only way out is for individuals to renounce their SIF opinions, which they won’t.
You mean ‘renounce’ for the greater good? Do we know what the greater good would be?
Exactly my point. Everyone has their own greater good. There is no longer a common good as there was when everyone was handed the privilege of voting. I realise that this is defeatist but you have to define a problem before you can solve it.
Do we support Israel or the Palestinians? Do we believe that men should be admitted to women’s domains? Do we believe that women should have children to support a future? Do we believe that immigration should be capped? Do we believe in religion and respect other people’s religious views? Do we believe that cars should be phased out with oil? Should we make everyone become vegan?
There are hundreds of questions like these, most of which didn’t even exist when we were granted universal suffrage. There are no answers, nor even useful compromises. The only way is to eliminate democracy, go down and down in the world and then, about 50 years from now, someone will reinvent the notion of democracy – once again to mean the majority.
Twaddle. You’ve clearly never lived anywhere but a democracy. Go have a try for a while.
Do we believe in good not evil? Err, yes. Oh well in that case just make it happen please. Bit infantile isn’t it to just demand something but have no real idea what it’ll take to get there?
I admit to only ever living in a democracy. But I have worked in many countries which were/are not democratic. I never met anybody who clearly hated his own country.
Define democracy.
As much as anything, democracy is a system where the voters can remove a government they consider unsatisfactory and elect a new one.
Practice falls somewhat short of that ideal while a so-called “uniparty”, of heir-to-Blair Tories and now Labour (who present as moderate), continues to monopolise politics, but Reform are fast developing a genuine alternative.
Tearing down all the political “machinery” which has been developed over several hundred years (well, ever since Simon de Montford’s first parliament in 1265!) is overkill. It is just a matter of finding the right party and candidates.
Yep, I can see that. But 5 years is a long, long time. And even longer if there is no real alternative available. A lot of irreparable damage can be done.
More than ever there is a huge generation gap as well, so that good for one group is bad for another. As an example, I could say that we should stop pandering to the trans lobby – but new generations grow up surrounded by best friends who are of a trans nature.
So, in such fast-moving times I don’t believe that our system is good enough. It could take 10 years to get the right party and that would be too late. Perhaps elections every 3 years would be better.
There are questions that can only be addressed by the collective but I think government is trying to answer questions better addressed by individual firms, consumers and the market.
People can disagree about which parts of life are better consider through voluntary transactions and which through the state but we’re not asking the questions.
“Something must be done”.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
What’s wrong with hanging persistent shoplifters ?
Almost Millenarian.
Not a new thing that.
Much of the dysfunction can be removed by allowing each party in each parliamentary constituency to choose their candidate, without A lists from HQ or other external agents.
The problem arises with the vetting process, which is best done by specialists: where is the dividing line between vetting and choosing?
Als, the Media’s Overton Window needs to be widened, so the public can listen to, and even participate, in informed discussion. The catastrophe of NET Zero policies could easily have been avoided with a few apposite questions. And yes, there are plenty with the appropriate knowledge and experience, but currently they are barred from the Legacy Media.
One would start with a maximum number of 200 MPs and 100 in the Upper chamber.
No MP could ever be eligible to go to the Upper chamber.
Civil servants would be clearly accountable for delivery of policy. And held accountable for failure.
The number of civil servants would never exceed 1% of the population.
There would be no quangos, No special advisors, No consultants.
MPs would set policy and pass laws and never get involved in operational matters.
This is an intriguing idea – the number of civil servants cannot exceed 1% of the population. Maybe that’s not the ideal number – I have no idea – but this approach would limit govt growth. Would also need to address the growth of private sector govt consultants.
It is not the system but the pople. Being cowardly, lazy, venal and incompetent are not vices but are often virtues.The competence of Peel, Canning, Palmerston, Wellington, Gladstone far exceeeds that of today’s politicians.
Probably true about the competence, but let’s not forget that Parliament has taken far more upon itself than it had to manage through most of the 19th century, some of necessity but others resulting from little more then busibody tendencies (albeit encouraged by vociferous campaigners).
Also, little has become simpler, except perhaps international diplomacy, where the UK’s sole policy these days seems to be to watch what the Yanks want or do and follow their example, with only occasional muted mutterings of dissent!
I’ve looked through all of the comments and not one of you men has mentioned that’s it’s less than 100 years since UK women got the vote on the same terms as men. Just sayin’.
Yes, calibre of politicians is in serious decline.
Instead of proper corruption of Lloyd George or even money making schemes of Tony Blair we have PM getting bribed with suits and glasses and few frocks for his wife.
Pathetic.
Labour owes Sue Gray for stitching Boris up.
She brought down the Conservatives so of course Starmer will be loyal to her.
Did she bring down the Tories for Labour or for some other purpose?
I think Johnson brought himself down. The Tories then had the brainwave to go with Mad Liz. Then got us ready for Rishi, all the while having made us poorer and more pathetic with Brexit brilliance. Own it.
The Bank of England acknowledge that they ambushed her, and that past BoE errors with LDIs were revealed. Truss hadn’t shaken off many of her party’s poor policies, but she did resurrect the North Sea oil/gas industry and fracking, offering the country some hope. That was her big mistake. :). Now it’s been safely closed down, all is well in the Globalist World.
And did the Tory leadership contest drag on and on, so making any changes in direction of policy ever more difficult, with so little time left in which to do it?
Have you begun to regret all those smug little posts about how wonderfully competent and ‘forensic’ the incoming government was going to be? Not going well so far, is it?
Probably not. Too interested in casting snide remarks from the ‘back benches’
There’s a leadership issue. Starmer is a lawyer. He can make a case and win (an election) especially when the opposing case is weak
But he’s not a leader. You don’t make your lawyer the CEO. Any company that does that is heading for trouble
Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. Nuff said.
As were Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher. It’s not being a lawyer per se; it’s being the kind of lawyer who thinks narrow legality is all that matters – hence his attitude to the donor gifts and his defence of cancelling arms sales to Israel
Margaret Thatcher was a Chemist
Oh excuse me, it’s the type of lawyer now.
And Lincoln’s constitutional lawyer view on Confederate succession?
Lincoln became a lawyer after serving in the military, running a store, owning a bar, entertaining crowds as a raconteur, serving as a postmaster, and serving as county surveyor. Which rather highlights the gross inexperience of lightweights like Starmer who’ve at best managed but never led.
You ever led an organisation like the CPS? In fact as chance would have it he’s the first PM in decades who has actually led something of size and importance before coming into politics.
Although he seems (or claims) to have been out of the office when most of the important decisions were made.
Was Starmer leading the CPS when his organisation systematically failed to prosecute media profile rapists and abusers, or was he leading it when his projects to integrate the successful COMPASS software with other systems all failed?
His only apparent success was to build one of the largest public pension pots in history and lobby for his own unique and personal government regulation to avoid paying tax above the cap that applies to ordinary folk. (The Pensions Increase (Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC) Regulations 2013.) Two Tier Keir indeed.
Analogies of any current predicament with historical situations is of course never exact and events get scrambled, either as tragedy or farce, but I like the analogy with the fall of Saddam Hussain. In any case when the time comes and we are witnessing the chaotic and violent implosion of the Starmer regime, if UnHerd decide to run a sweepstake on which personalities are the closest analogs to entities of the Hussain regime, notwithstanding they already have a Lord Ali in their ranks, I claim first dibs on David Lammy as Labour’s very own version of Comical Ali.
Hardly surprising when only three years ago Palestinian flags were all the rage outside the Labour Party Conference and Rosie Duffield needed police protection to get a hearing. And the singing of ‘God save the King’ is still anathema to many of the activists.
A few days ago Starmer told a reporter that “he was firmly in control”. Whenever someone says that it means the exact opposite.
Allied to the issue of the rudderless ship there is the rather significant question about Starmer and his clan’s ethics in accepting gifts without seemingly questioning the possibility of what was behind the gift or perhaps even caring that there might be a quid pro quo. Also what kind of thought process went on in the mind of Starmer, who pocketed £300k after tax, yet still thought it acceptable to allow someone else pay for his and his wife’s clothes while cancelling the WFA which will undoubtedly lead to deaths of some of our OAP’s. A child could explain that the public would not see those issues as a “good look”.
i am beginning to think that Sir Keir’s jacket is hanging on a very shaky peg.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch.
What we’re seeing here is a classic management problem. A boss who knows enough buzzwords to sound good to the relatively naive person on the street, but no clue how to deliver them or even the first steps, surrounds himself with people who claim to know. There will always be a plentiful supply of second tier chancers.
From a political point of view it works because no single successful star player can ever big enough to become a rival, while allowing the leader to isolate themself from blame for anything that goes wrong. Safety by delegation.
This is palace political management.
To the headline, hopefully yes, literally
Sadly , Starmer is a “bear of very little brain”. He has no “wise owl” to guide him and only Piglet Rachel, the Pension Robber . We are in deep trouble with this lot of clearly incompetent newbies , led by a serious bully in the form of Gray, who I think Starmer is frightened of , having no ideas of his own. At least McSweeney gave him a direction to go in , in opposition , but now his job is done , we are all stuck with Gray.
“Each of the main figures close to him — Sue Gray, Chief of Staff; Matthew Doyle, communications director; Morgan McSweeney, campaign director; and Vidhya Alakeson, political director — are impressive.” Tom McTague needs to get out more- a less impressive crew would be hard to find.
What I find unimpressive – and disturbing – is that the four key figures listed are the communications director, campaign director, political director and chief of staff. However talented they might be, only one is elected and are any accountable in Parliament ? Morgan McSweeney is now an MP, but I’ve seen no evidence that his role has any public accountability in Parliament. And isn’t the Chancellor of the Exchequer supposed to be important ?
That’s before we ask exactly what these roles are and why they are needed and publicly funded. Why is a “campaigns director” (he’s actually “Head of Political Strategy” now) needed 2 months after a general election ?
Since entering government, the situation has deteriorated with extraordinary speed.
Why is this surprising? Even in the US, it was obvious that the election was about Labor not being the Tories. That was it. “We are not them.” There was nothing affirmative, aspirational, or even thought-provoking about possible policy prescriptions. On the issue that, from here at least, seems most vexing and most on people’s minds – immigration – Labor has decided that the issue is those annoying citizens who complain, not the illegals who are swamping the place.
The lack of coherence to what the party stands for is a major issue – they were never ready to form a government. But the lack of leadership and a culture of individuals being more focused on themselves, money and personal gain and climbing up the tree quickly will lead to even more catastrophic policies and decisions and we will be the “baddies” for complaining about them.
Such is their level of incompetency, irresponsibility, callousness, conceitedness and utter distinction with the British population, this feels like a government that could be brought down from the street.
They appear from time to time, and it would be a first for Britain. But could it manifest itself over a period of a few years, as a vanguard decided that voting was not going to represent them and more radical political intervention was required?
You are describing a text book version of a bad management . There is no plan for the team to follow.
All decisions have to be taken at the top. {which immediately gums everything up because no one person can run everything- even if they are available 24/7 which PMs are not).
The failure to authorise people to act within the (absent) plan . The insistence that everything has to be cleared at the top means that you have a highly paid team without the authority to do anything – other than give sound bites to press – most of which are just empty noise being repeated.
The reason Johnson won the 2019 general election was because the Tory Party preferred him, Labour wrecked their chance by picking the inept Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 and Johnson gave Labour its biggest thrashing since the mid 1930s.
And Now Starmer, Rayner and Rachel Reeves are having to defend themselves against exactly the same charge for which Johnson was found guilty by Sue Gray, (Partygate) although this time it’s – Clothesgate.
Gray’s Partygate investigation was published on 31 January 2022. Her final report in May 2022 described multiple events, including excessive drinking and a lack of respect shown to cleaning and security staff. She concluded that senior political and civil service leadership “must bear responsibility for this culture”.
Now it’s his gross stupidity that Starmer, the Prime Minister of one of the world’s oldest Parliamentary Democracies, who has trashed its reputation for a bag of clothes and a box of spectacles.
And this time Ms Gray doesn’t even have to leave her desk to investigate.
Starmer never did have any workable ideas or effective plans to make genuine improvements in prosperity and social mobility. Its all about virtue signalling. Starmer and his team are in a moral vacuum.
They have been found out already
It’s The Emporer’s New Clothes.
Well, yes. They won power by criticising and by not committing to anything. Now they are in power, they find there is no mandate for whatever it is, individually, they want to do.
And I am seriously concerned about Gray. The transition from neutral diligent civil servant to Chief of Staff for a highly ideological government is just too unbelievable.
Overwhelmed by opportunity, the Labour Party only has five years to completely stuff Britain. Fortunately the outgoing Tories have given them a good head start.
I seem to recall that Gordon Brown devoted so much energy to becoming PM that he had none left to plan what to do when he was PM.
The most successful administrations usually have a duopoly, or more, at the top: Margaret Thatcher had a circle of supporters (the Drys vs the Wets), together with Willie Whitelaw for party management; Blair was actually Blair/Brown/Mandelson + Campbell. It is the solitary figures who struggle; who maybe see themselves as great leaders but who are in fact isolated and unloved. Heath, Johnson, and for the example which I think most resembles KS’s current position, John Major.
All utterly predictable. All utterly inevitable.
The Labour party long since abandoned working class people. Only those who don’t follow politics at all don’t know this. It is as much as Starmer can do to hide his loathing of normal people and their views, and the same can be said of many of the party, especially the newly elected.
They are an incompetent lot, making the Tories look in control. They have been certain to be in government this year, yet they have clearly been more interested in hoovering up vast amounts of cash and benefits from dodgy donors.
They were hardly liked anyway. In the most propitious circumstances imaginable, they still only managed 33+% of the vote. They are now, already, widely reviled as charlatans and hypocritical chancers. And this could be their high water mark.
According to Ben Riley-Smith of the Telegraph, the “Quad” is Starmer, Reeves, Rayner and McFadden. Gray, Doyle, McSweeney and Vidhya Alakeson are not mentioned.
You have to wonder how much of this supposed tension in No. 10 is actually froth rather than scum…
They are lost because they seem to have forgotten what Cabinet Government is. Going back to courtiers competing for the ear of a Tudor monarch is hardly the way forward.
But who is in the wings warming up to actually Britain.
Drafting error in the penultimate para. McTague means ‘it was not long before’ briefing against Cummings spread….
Usually enjoy McT , but not sure he’s offering enough here to justify a place. The press and social media are replete with claims Starmer’s Labour is not leading. To be fair, when the story is that a clear pattern is not emerging, there can be many reasons for that rather than one big secret to be revealed. I’m more concerned that McT ‘s not commenting on some bits of evidence pretty much in the public domain, to the effect that Starmer doesn’t think he lacks vision or even appreciate there’s an apparent regime vacuum crisis. That can be as much due to his actual career pathway and the basis on which others have agreed he can be eased into power than any lack of normal ‘political experience.’
I doubt very much Starmer himself knows what he wants. He spent the majority of his period as the opposition leader being diametrically opposed to the Tories out of political opportunism rather than political pragmatism which has resulted in a contradictory mess inside his head.
It would take him at least one term to unravel this contradictory mess beyond his superficial rhetorical soundbites for him to even know what he wants, let alone what is good for the majority of the country.
I suppose many gave Kier Starmer the benefit of the doubt when he failed to lay down any clear policies in his electoral campaign, with putting VAT on private schools being the only clear policy most people could name. Next time round, I don’t believe he’d get away with it. Unfortunately, we now have to live through the reality of a government who really didn’t have any good ideas up their sleeves.
She did for Johnson with the help of Keir; now who will she promote to help her depose him in his turn? Ingham and even Campbell were loyal to their mistresses and masters… since then the advisers have become increasingly motivated by their own nepharious and narcissistic interests… first MacBride and Draper, vicious but incompetent, and then in turn the traitorous disruptor Cummings and now this…
In answer to the question posed by the title: One can only hope, and much sooner than later.
V welcome the Author’s articles and hope a few of those who may have real influence get to read them.
Stepping back from the inevitable yah-boo of partisan politics, what he’s highlighting is the massive difference between electioneering and governing. That was ever present under the Tories with their sloganeering charlatans and a lesson they and other parties, including Labour, have to absorb. It’s incredibly difficult. Twaddle about Blobs etc doesn’t help and just deflects from serious thought.
Somehow Starmer has to get the best out of likes McSweeney and Gray who both give him vital attributes. Getting a team to work effectively a fundamental test of any leader and even more challenging in the world of politics where Parties are always broad coalitions. We’re going to see if he’s up to it. We have to elect people who are and who aren’t just good at getting a cheer.
Everyone knows what needs to be done:
Reduce the burden of taxation on productive activity – particularly small businesses – by taking real steps to recover the trillions in unearned property wealth lavished by the Blair government and its successors on the rent seeking class.Get immigration under control.De-centralise, revive our local government institutions and cut the central bureaucracy in half.
We’ll find out in October whether Starmer and Reeves have the courage to do any of these things. I somehow doubt they will.
Just a glimmer there of some useful stuff HB hidden underneath the on-going Blair fixation syndrome, chapeau.
How we incentivise and create a better investment culture vital. We have to ask why so many fantastic UK companies get to a certain stage and then can’t raise sufficient capital so get taken over and their centre of gravity moves abroad. This isn’t quite the same I suspect as your focus on SMEs, but not far off.
Controlling immigration – that’s a desire but not a policy to achieve it. You/we need to describe how to wean industries off it, what the consequences might be short-term and how we’ll handle those. Agree with more devolution to local Govt.
Ever since mechanical engineering took over from civil engineering with the development of railways , there has been a need to improve scientific and engineering training. Moving earth by using a navvy requires that person to have massive strength. Cutting metal to make a piston and building steam engines requires precision engineering skill. Imperial college was founded in the 1850s because it was realised Britain was falling behind Germany in the field of industrial chemistry. The skill to make a Swiss watch or the most advanced silicon chips are of the highest order. Unless people have the same painstaking attention to detail and work mentality of Switzerland and Taiwan one cannot educate and train people to the standards required to be employed in watch and chip manufacturing.
Post WW2 , the German unions were controlled by the craft one; in Britain the un and semiskilled ones like the TGWU who opposed upgrading technical skills as they would lose members. Up grading of technology,especially introduction of inegrated circuits in mid 1960s meant loss of un and semi skilled jobs. A docker, member of the TGWU who retrains and becomes an electrician would join the EETPU. This means loss of income for TGWU and voting power within the TUC and Labour Party. Consequently unions such as TGWU opposed introducing more advanced technology and upgrading skills.
The reason why the British Special Forces or 3 Starred Michelin chefs, top athletes, soloists in the classical musical world, top ballerinas are so good is that these are people have the will to undergo years of hard, rigorous selection, training and testing.
Those skills are the foundations of civilisations, both ancient (whatever the most advanced technology happens to be at the time) and modern.
Neglect them, as we appear to be doing, and the foundations start to collapse. We’re closing down our industrial base, including the extraction of raw materials. This is the very opposite of what China and now India are doing and it’s utter madness.
Your point about individual tenacity and drive to be the best is well made. It still exists, and it’s remarkable how our Olympic medal tallies continue to far outweigh our relative population size. The only thing holding the UK back is an absence of political courage and leadership.
Totall agree. Alexander said he would would rather fight an army of lions led by a sheep than an army of sheep led by a lion. The Persians say ” A fish rots from the head”. The decay of spirit by the middle and upper classes who run Britain is our first and largest problem.
The reason growing businesses can’t raise capital is that the property market represents a much safer, more profitable investment for a bank. The reason for that in turn is that the government guarantees that property prices will rise and manipulates interest rates to ensure that they do – especially in the run-up to an election (CF Gordon Brown 2004).
Believe me, you would be astonished how much easier it is to raise a business loan in the US without being forced to put your house in it.
What do you suggest for the recovery of unearned property wealth? Going forward you could have a land value tax for example, but recovery of what has already occurred? I can’t see it, not least because in many cases it’s already been spent or otherwise exchanged.
My choice would be a large surcharge on Council Tax for houses worth more than 1.5 million with a 100% discount for households with children in full time education.
This would be fairly simple to implement as all the data needed is in the Land Registry. A well-trained LLM could do the job in minutes.
The problem there is, who decides a house is worth £1.5 million?
It’s fairly simple. We know the price last obtained for the property and when it was last sold. We know how prices in any neighbourhood have moved since then because all this information is in the Land Registry.
I do take the point that there will be borderline cases. Maybe a sliding scale is the solution to that.
Might want to set the rates differently in different areas, otherwise London’s councils will be loaded and anywhere outside the SE will raise very little.
However, this doesn’t recover anything from landlords (or anyone else) that loaded up in the late 90s and early 00s that have since sold up. They made absolute fortunes. And it would catch those that have bought recently, who are effectively already the people that have paid the previous owner their unearned wealth (along with the tenants in the case of a LL).
I can’t see how it can be done – it happened and it mostly can’t be recovered. The thing to do would be to make sure it can’t happen again, and bring the cost of housing down. Won’t happen though.
I am sorry but this is nonsense.
Two bedroom flat (or definitely small 3 bed terrace house) would cost over 1.5mln in many parts of London.
You could buy small version of Buckingham Palace in Midlands and North for less than that.
Starmer’s job is not only to manage the team. It’s also to pick the right team.
Since he’s tried and failed on multiple occasions to fire Angela Rayner, we can be fairly sure his authority doesn’t run that far. If a leader cannot command authority and a certain amount of fear, they’re going nowhere. That’s before we consider whether they’re actually competent and know what they want.
Most amused by the talk of “tough decisions” in the article. I guess that includes folding to all the union pay demands without any attempt at negotation. Really tough.
Starmer is determined, addresses issues forensically, dependent on the knowledge of others, pragmatic, biased by past senses of injustice, poor in people skills, particularly weak in engaging with other individuals, avoids sticking his neck out publically and ruthless. At worse he will be a rabbit in the headlights at best he will build a team. Too early to tell.
But the signs are not good.
What we are learning now about his performance as DPP does not augur well.