On his inauguration in the spring of 1933 the incoming president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, inherited a country beset by economic and social disintegration. Homebuilding had fallen by 80% in the previous three years; 9,000 banks had collapsed since 1929; the average household had seen its income fall by almost half over the same period.
Roosevelt’s response was decisive. On entering the Oval Office he summoned a special session of Congress that would last three months. In the period that followed, his administration passed 15 bills designed to leave the Great Depression behind. Indeed, it is from this furious moment in American history that the concept of the “first 100 days” was born.
Britain’s problems in 2024 are significant, but they are not those of Thirties America. Yet the first 100 days of Keir Starmer’s premiership have been the opposite of what one might have expected. Consider how the PM chose to take the winter fuel allowance from millions while seeing no issue with accepting £32,000 of free suits. Or how he attended concerts and football matches gratis while saying the country should prepare for hardship. Then there’s the matter of political sequencing: having made energy bills more expensive for cash-strapped pensioners, the PM now wants a debate around assisted dying. Had Starmer been in FDR’s shoes, one suspects he would have been accepting free Corvettes and Brooks Brothers ties rather than knocking heads together.
The problem with death spirals is you never know when you’ve hit the bottom. Now, with a week before that Rooseveltian milestone is reached, Sue Gray — Starmer’s Chief of Staff — has resigned.
This was supposedly unthinkable as recently as a fortnight ago, when Angela Rayner told the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg that Gray would “absolutely” be in her job by Christmas. But while Rayner made those public assurances, at Labour’s party conference it was being whispered that Gray was on borrowed time. The problem, as I was repeatedly told, was that the political instincts of Gray and Morgan McSweeney — who now replaces her as Starmer’s chief of staff — not only diverged but were in polar opposition.
For McSweeney the point of politics is to be elected, and once elected to campaign for re-election. For Gray, by contrast, it is the boring bit bolted on to government. Starmer hoped he could benefit from both figures. But instead their competing beliefs and vision — with McSweeney allegedly behind the briefings against Gray — created a black hole at the heart of Number 10. While McSweeney supposedly viewed himself as being more in touch with those voters Labour needs to win, Gray was part of the blob, too distracted by identity politics and the latest liberal fad.
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