February 8, 2025 - 1:30pm
Is Keir Starmer capable of thinking outside the box? Excerpts from a new book by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer, report that the Prime Minister’s own chief of staff Morgan McSweeney dismissed his boss as “an HR manager, not a leader”.
Many assumed that because he had led a major government agency, the Crown Prosecution Service, Starmer would be better equipped than most British prime ministers to run the Government. In the last general election, he was criticised by the Tories for being more of a “lawyer than a leader”, but McSweeney’s HR manager description is more appropriate. A good lawyer can run through different sets of arguments, weighing up their pros and cons.
Tony Blair, our most recent barrister PM before Starmer, was the master of this. A Labour MP who opposed the Iraq War told me that Blair repeatedly invited her to his office to debate the case for war. She eventually realised that he was using her to refine his arguments for war, not because he wanted to be persuaded or even to persuade her. She stopped going after that. Blair could think outside the box. He challenged his party over certain sacred cows and could make a persuasive case for why he was right, both philosophically and electorally. He was able to do “the vision thing”, as George H.W. Bush once put it.
Starmer, in contrast, cannot do “the vision thing”. His approach to leadership is more akin to Civil Service management. Let someone else set the political direction and then follow the rules as best as possible. This is not inconsistent with a prime minister who works hard, nor is it to suggest that Starmer is unintelligent. But it is not proper political leadership, and it will be his undoing.
One of the clearest examples of his inability to think radically pertains to our post-Brexit political economy. The Labour government has rightly concluded that there must be no question of rejoining the European Union, but that’s where the thinking stops. Part of the problem is that Labour politicians, including Starmer, have tended to see Brexit as a problem to be managed rather than a set of new opportunities.
This explains his latest overtures to the European Union. He knows that rejoining the Single Market and Customs Union is not possible, but he feels that the only “good” public policy option is to try to obtain as many of those benefits as possible. Various liberal commentators urge Starmer to go further in trading away British sovereignty for greater EU market integration. This would be a mistake, but one which Starmer is likely to make.
Labour has never taken Brexit seriously, and the Prime Minister’s period as Shadow Brexit Secretary was a missed opportunity for the party to formulate an alternative vision of Britain outside the EU to the Conservatives.
The irony of Brexit is that the policy tools which the UK Government gained from it are better suited to a Left-wing than a Right-wing government. Yet it is the Right which wants to “make a success of Brexit” with tools that are distinctly Left-wing — more centralised control of the economy and industry — while the Left wants to kill Brexit by embracing neoliberal assumptions about global capitalism.
It’s time for Whitehall to start picking winners and losers again. If a part of the country is economically depressed, provide grants and tax abatements for firms to relocate there. If an economically or socially valuable employer is closing or relocating, consider taking them into public ownership. Require the public sector to buy British; make Government grants conditional on buying British services and manufactures. Consider erecting tariffs to protect socially useful industries. Reduce immigration to drive up wages and workplace standards.
There will be many “experts” steeped in the neoliberal orthodoxies of the past 50 years who will warn against these policies, claiming they are too risky and untested. But, it’s time for Labour to tear up the old rule book. A different game is already being played — it’s time our Prime Minister noticed.
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SubscribeOdd article. Of course he has the vision thing. He was a Trotskyist for a long time. Communists do the vision thing. They also like money and freebies.
He is a human rights lawyer. That’s not vision?
Unherd why not write about the international vision Starmer is demonstrating and realising in the Chagos debacle?
A story. A pupil barrister goes on a tour of Matrix Chambers and notices the new refurbishment and building work. What’s going on? Oh that’s the new Chagos wing. It’s costing us a lot. But don’t worry we are paying it off in instalments, a percentage each year. Someone said it will take 100 years but I don’t believe that. Great. Yes. It is very lucrative working here. I think I will. I love human rights.
An ideological cult is not ‘vision’, except in the fanatical ravings about visions professed by a cult disciple.
I’m not entirely convinced by the suggested solutions, but agree totally with the thrust of this piece. We have been living through a period of political managerialism, utterly lacking in creativity and with precious little honesty about our true situation and the available options for meaningful action. We are crying out for firm leadership, a coherent vision and the determination to implement hard decisions. One of the chief of these is the need for parliament to take back the power it has neglectfully and irresponsibly ceded to the legal profession and judiciary. Perhaps then we will be able to act without all the ludicrous delays and challenges from self-important know-it-alls causing chaos.
Starmer will never do that because he is part of that judiciary and hence totally believes that is where power ultimately should reside, aided and abetted by a compliant civil service.
Very true!
Got a current example of the judiciary blocked Parliamentary made Law?
More generally you seem supportive of the Starmer and Reeves push to reduce the delays in Planning approvals. 14 years of Right wing Govt failed to tackle that for some reason.
Starmer, Hermer, Sands. They all have a vision.
Unherd is s disgrace for not describing what it is. And pretending they don’t have that ‘vision thing’.
The Far Left works in the dark. And if Unherd look the other way that can only mean they share the values of the Left or are paid to pretend not to see.
All this waffle about what Starmer should be doing just deflects from what he is doing.
Unherd do your public duty and report on Starmer and Hermer and Sands and the Chagos debacle.
Today I have twice criticised what UnHerd is doing and each time the post has been removed. If you say what you really think, people get offended.
Keep going. Unherd are a disgrace. I think they are deeply compromised.
Read Animal Farm. And then place Starmer, Hermer and Sands in the story.
Unherd. Write about Starmer and his inner circle of British human rights laywers one of whom planted a foreign flag on British territory. No doubt being well renumerated for doing it.
You can use my title. “Britain for sale. POA. More information visit Matrix Chambers.”
I agree, there is a tale to be told there. What a bunch those Matrix weirdos are!
More two tier from Starmer. A health minister has said to a pensioner who does not vote Labour that ‘I hope you die’. He has been suspended from his minister’s post but, and here’s the kicker, has said he will continue to support Labour and Starmer ‘in any way I can.’
When will Unherd, as a supposedly neutral media outlet, write about the moral vacuum that is the Labour Party?
If you don’t have standards a country will go to the dogs.
That includes the media.
The media must hold the government to account. Not acquiesce in its corruption.
“It’s time for the government to pick winners and losers”. No it’s time for government to get out of the way. The last time we tried statism after 30 years we were left with British Coal, British Leyland, and Concorde. I rest my case.
The latter being a resounding success both in terms of technology and profitability. It would have been an even greater success if the US hadn’t had a fit of jealously and deliberately blocked the Europe/West Coast supersonic route.
As I understand it, Concorde was only profitable because the development costs were written off.
Which is a perfect example of the rare time the UK government picked a winner and backed it.
Starmer is not ” failing to grasp ”
It is deliberate . His ideology demands a Super State administered by fully trained, educated & briefed ” Administrators ”
In fact exactly as originally envisaged by the EU inventors !
Democracy merely a “shadow play” (charade )
Oddly Brexit increased the number of Govt bureaucrats to administer the increase in trade friction? Border force increased too, albeit we still increased net migration.
I would hazard a guess you voted for Brexit and hence this increase?
Well done.
I would hazard a guess you voted against Brexit
Certainly migration increased as it has across the whole of Europe ( not least in using “friendly EU countries ” as a jumping off zone for the UK )
PS Thanks for the congratulations ;
Though I am somewhat saddened you seem to prefer government by diktat from a Commission located in Brussels than a Parliament in London ( always providing of course you live in the UK )
I think you are mixing up illegal and legal migration UR. A common mistake.
Legal was a decision to issue far more Visa’s by Right wing Governments rather than address issues another way. The illegals are a far smaller proportion of the total, albeit Brexit also stopped us being able to return them to the point at which they entered the EU if we wished.
Why prefer diktat from London rather than Brussels?
Context of course is virtually nobody thinks Brexit has been a success – only 11% in recent polls. And only 30% now think it was the right decision. Pretty damning stats. One can argue about the veracity of specific Polls but few would argue this isn’t fairly reflective of the pubic mood.
However we aren’t going back at this time, wouldn’t get the advantageous terms we had before either, and nor do the ‘politics’ make it viable right now. Starmer knows this. Some reductions in friction and perhaps a strengthened Defence and Security pact to complement NATO probably as much as he’ll push. Trump of course might tip the balance either way, so sensible to keep options open for the moment. Starmer knows too his dilemma is he satisfies neither extreme – the ardent Singapore on Thames Brexiteers who led us into this sh+tshow, nor the Remainers who think the clock can be turned back. Nonetheless navigating a middle way is his only recourse.
Brexit advocates tend to now accept it’s been a failure but due to somebody else’s fault, forgetting they were largely in power. Public hasn’t forgotten that malfeasance though, so even Badenoch and Farage are in a bind on this with the public mood.
This Author does, to their credit, list some of things that could have been done and may still. They are fairly high level, simple to say, complex to do, but it’s better than the usual Brexiteer whinge-fest. The difficultly is most of these things require investment that would not deliver instantaneous results and thus required honesty about the pain before benefits materialise. This pain even more acute given the state of the public finances and the inheritance bequeathed to Starmer.
I suspect Starmer and many elements within McSweeney’s orbit recognise these opportunities, knowing a return to the previous EU terms never going to happen in their lifetimes. However for the moment the money simply doesn’t exist to make these investments at the pace one might wish. The politics between EU and Trump also mean keeping options open sensible.
Brexit only provides an opportunity to the country in place of being shackled to a bureaucratic anti-democratic zombie federation. There has been little possibility to develop those opportunities given the difficulties experienced in settling on decoupling terms in the face of determined efforts to thwart the decision both on the part of the EU and internally by Remainers followed by covid and then the recent election. None of the established traditional political parties favoured Brexit so it is unsurprising given these headwinds that not much positive has emerged.
Personally I voted to remain because I had little faith that those in favour of Brexit would in fact overcome the institutional biases of the political and administrative class in favour of the status quo and we would end up with the sort of dogs dinner that we have rather than seizing the opportunities available to revive the UK as a successful trading nation. However, at least unshackled we have the potential for a better future even if the chances of our actually grasping it remain utterly remote under a Labour government and most uncertain under any subsequent regime.
You talk about ‘original terms’ as if that is some sort of nostalgic lost ideal. Yet the country chose to leave a EU project that was geared to destroying national sovereignty, in favour of independence. What people lament now is the mess a series of spineless governments have made of the post Brexit period. From the start, they should’ve gone to the EU to make it clear that the UK isn’t going anywhere – it is still a geographical part of Europe – and the challenge is to work out a healthy relationship going forward. Instead we have allowed a thoroughly miffed France to dictate the process, angered by having their idea of Gloire compromised by the trouble making anglais and hell bent on exacting revenge. The constant stream of immigrants from their shores is only the most obvious of their sabotage efforts.
Only the first 4 words of the title are needed
T2K is not failing, he’s succedding. The fact that you think he somehow works for your interests just proves you are a moron.
Picking winners and losers is never a good policy. The proper policy is to attract winners through low tax and fewer regulatory hurdles.
The net zero fantasy cannot be achieved without massive state interference in the economy.
Brexit let the UK escape from the heavy bureaucracy of Brussels. The vacuum was filled with homegrown bureaucracy.
Abou Keir Starmer is succesffuly leverging Brexit, and implementing his shariah law in the UK.
F*** whoever supports him, f** whoever does not recognize him as an ennemy, glory to whoever succesfully opposes him.