Instead, British politics over the last decade has seen the rise of the celebrity adviser — staff who have been visible shapers of the government agenda and essential to the party leader or Prime Minister. When I was in Downing Street working for Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Chief of Staff was the former mandarin Jonathan Powell, a calm, long-serving presence who focused on the critical issues of Northern Ireland and defense and security. Personalities vary, but the elevation of Chief of Staff started with Dominic Cummings, who worked for Boris Johnson as Chief Adviser. As a named and known figure, Cummings had his own reputation as a political player, having successfully led Vote Leave to victory in the Brexit referendum, and maintained his own links with the media when inside No 10. He continued to narrate his own theory of the case to selected journalists even through the national crisis of Covid, culminating in the infamous press conference held in the Downing Street garden.

Cummings established a set of behaviors and assumptions that have continued to define the Chief of Staff role. Blaming the civil service. Attempting to strengthen the center of government. Concentrating flows of information. Briefing journalists. Suspending the whip from MPs. This, sadly, became a model for Keir Starmer’s No 10 operation. 

The obvious flaw in the Cummings model is captured by that former Labour Cabinet minister Clare Short’s description of special advisers as “people who live in the dark”. She meant it as an attack on spin doctors,  but it was also good advice. The iron law of staffing is that you must not become the story. And when you do — whether you are Alastair Campbell, Dominic Cummings, or Morgan McSweeney — you will have to go. Each fell in different ways: Alastair went to war with the media, finally turning up on screen; Dom lost an internal Downing Street power struggle; Morgan took responsibility for his closeness to Peter Mandelson. Yet each had become a household name — the very opposite of lurking in the shadows. 

The less obvious structural problem is that, over the past decade, the job of Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has been held by 14 different people. This, too, is part of the Cummings legacy. The reason is Brexit. That was the ultimate project of change without a plan, and it has set the template for UK politics. A profound rejection of “things as they are” to which politicians repeatedly failed to respond. Theresa May — no plan, just a hard Brexit with a “dementia tax” and restoration of hunting. Boris Johnson — no plan, and he was not saved by his swift response to the global crisis of Covid. Rishi Sunak — no plan but some spreadsheets and some welcome but insufficient incremental changes. Keir Starmer — no plan, not even a plan to make a plan.

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For a decade, voters have demanded change, whether opting for Brexit, surging to Corbyn, or delivering landslides in turn to Johnson and Starmer. What to change from is obvious: the status quo. What to change to is far more opaque, not least because neoliberal governance, or the “Treasury view”, as it is commonly known, is the paradigm within which government politicians live and think. The bond vigilantes have been beseeched to attack Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, to support the government’s Budget, and now to quell backbench Labour unease. Just look at how easily the current Labour leadership turns to the bond markets for support in party management. 

There is a desperate need for Labour to break with the current political frame, which for a decade has ensured virtually no growth in wages and living standards. Yet there is stasis within the Labour party at the moment — apart from the call by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who himself admitted he has no rule in changing the UK leader, for Starmer to resign. Sure, there is a structural problem: the possible candidates are waiting for the result of inquiries. Angela Rayner hasn’t had resolution of an HMRC inquiry; others await the full publication of correspondence between Peter Mandelson and ministers. Burnham, the single most popular figure in Labour politics, is marooned outside the House of Commons having been barred from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election in McSweeney’s last backroom move to protect his boss. Burnham’s candidacy in that contest would have given a voice to voters and a potential vehicle for change for the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). So this is currently a Mexican stand-off in which no-one can pull a trigger.

Yet, as the former Labour Cabinet minister Tony Benn used to say, what matters most are not personalities but issues. The real question for anyone who wants to replace Starmer is what policy platform would restore Labour’s popularity to 25% — which would make it competitive with Reform UK. In reality, there are two options: focus on delivery or focus on change. The first of these, currently being pursued by the Starmer government as the “cost-of-living agenda”, is a cul-de-sac. Sadly, it is the path and error of the technocrat. It is more a tactic than a strategy, and it rests on making a series of small, incremental changes in the hope that those will accumulate into a meaningful difference. 

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The problem is that the cost of living never goes down, not least because, since the Thirties, politicians and economists have been conscious of the massive danger of deflation. So, if prices won’t go down, what to do? The Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, has popularized the term “Affordability”. The concept brings increased spending power into the calculation — with more of that then things are more affordable. The record rise in the minimum wage is part of that, as is the reality of rent controls coming in through strengthening renters’ rights in England.

That’s why Labour’s second option — focusing on change, rather than delivery — is the real contest. Just look at the rise of insurgent parties in the UK. On the Left, there are the Greens, and on the Right there is Reform UK — both fueled by voters who distrust big business, believe the system isn’t working, and have lost trust in the traditional parties. 

Given these circumstances, the Labour Party needs a new political economy. Without a theory of how to allocate revenue and capital fairly, who the winners and losers are, and who their enemy is, changing leaders is pointless. That new political economy requires obeying the first law of politics — the voters are never wrong, so act on their worries. Yes, they complain about the cost of living, but the biggest element of that is housing — and housebuilding has fallen catastrophically. The only entity that can build at speed and scale is the government — so it is time for half a million council houses built on government land. The biggest existential fear for workers is the advance of AI, while for parents it’s the impact of Big Teach on their kids’ futures. For Labour, the natural party of intervention, that means swift and tough regulation.

Above all else, the party must apologize. Admit that Labour lost its way. None of its mistakes — the reasons it has lost support — were in the manifesto. Cutting winter fuel payments, attacking social security for people with disabilities, appointing the wrong ambassador — those were all done in government. Return to the manifesto and build a plan to implement big changes that will be visible and will be felt day by day, month by month, over the remaining years of the parliament. That landslide majority could still come in handy, if Labour can find a true social democratic purpose. Then there may be a Chief of Staff in Downing Street whose name we don’t need to know.

The abandoned criminal case, involving Westminster researchers accused of passing material to Beijing, reveals the ghost in the machine: the British establishment’s rank hypocrisy over what constitutes national security. To put it simply, espionage isn’t espionage when politically it’s inconvenient. For the police and security services, this poses an obvious dilemma. Why bother chasing spies in the first place? Such hypocrisy was ever thus, from the kid-glove treatment of the Cambridge Five, to MI6’s decision to hide Michael Foot’s suspected status as a Soviet “agent of influence” before the 1983 election.

For decades, then, our political culture has been seeped in opacity and hypocrisy, something I’ve encountered myself. As a special branch detective, I remember a routine financial vetting review. This was invasive — yet entirely necessary. Any counterintelligence officer knows employees with money troubles constitute a potential point of compromise. I, a lowly detective, spent hours accounting for every penny I’d spent over the past year.

I saw other incongruities, especially where the Official Secrets Acts was concerned. When MI5 officer David Shayler removed a hoard of secret files from the records section at Thames House, we found them in a newspaper editor’s safe. This constituted several offenses, including under the 1911 Official Secrets Act, which features prominently in the Chinese scandal. Created to combat German naval espionage, it is a stuffy Edwardian sofa of a law, its definition of what constituted “damage” to the state better suited to the age of the telegram.

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Faced with these challenges in the Shayler case, our financial investigator suggested an elegant solution: simply charge the newspaper editor with the bog-standard offense of Handling Stolen Goods. This, we at Scotland Yard agreed, was a good idea; the CPS, and no doubt the Attorney General, disagreed. This was during the early days of New Labour, when news management trumped all. I later heard rumors that a senior Labour figure confessed there was no appetite for “going to war with The Mail on Sunday.”

This culture of “rules for thee but not for me” runs rampant across all political parties and Whitehall elites. That’s especially frustrating when public bodies spend precious time and resources fostering a “security culture” — one where operational security (OPSEC) is paramount. Intrusive vetting is one common tactic here, with probing questions about a candidate’s political views and private life (sex life included). So-called “clear desk” policies are obsessively policed too: leaving a document on a desk while you pop to the loo can lead to a reprimand. All the while, restrictions are habitually placed on private conduct, from being a member of a controversial political party to having contact with foreign nationals.

Then there are the so-called “STRAP” rules, a codeword to designate a ban on the use of digital devices in areas where sensitive intelligence is handled. Yet as so often, senior police officers, or civil servants, seem strangely exempt here. I remember attending a mandatory GCHQ OPSEC briefing, where a technical officer from GCHQ demonstrated how easily everyday devices can be hacked. When he asked what might shield a phone from hostile compromise, a wag put up his hand. “The rank of chief superintendent and above,” he suggested, “protects mobiles from all foreign intelligence services.”

Like much else in Britain, then, attitudes to secrecy appear two-tier. Over my own career, I often got the impression that senior officials conflate their own importance — and political hobbyhorses — with those of the wider United Kingdom. And as Jonathan Powell may yet learn, backroom deals are all very well until you piss on the wrong people. Either way, realpolitik becomes more difficult in an era of instant rebuttal, quicksilver-fast social media and febrile, impermanent governments.

You grow pretty cynical after a career in the police — but even I’m shocked by the unsightly infighting between the Government and CPS, not least because of the Prime Minister’s previous (and much-referenced) incarnation as director of public prosecutions. The current DPP, Stephen Parkinson, is a Westminster lifer, not known for rocking boats. Significantly, Parkinson is also the first DPP who served as a solicitor rather than a barrister. Could he, finally, be giving the KC old boy’s network the finger, standing his ground against the elite consensus? Such details are the cogs upon which mighty wheels turn. Then there are the Cabinet Office veterans Simon Case and Mark Sedwill, both veritable Jacques Cousteaus of the Deep State, and both immersed in national security matters.

How, then, does this Whitehall’s dead, invisible hand impact actual investigations? The China case is perhaps instructive. Unlike TV spooks, real intelligence officers don’t mysteriously appear at crime scenes and tell the cops what to do. The dark deeds are performed in the Cabinet Office, or in Whitehall pubs. Then there are the courts, where sensitive evidence is subjected to endless voire dire, or meta-trials, as lawyers join silky verbal battle to establish the admissibility of evidence. These arguments happen in camera or in a judge’s chambers, or else involve issuing “Public Interest Immunity” certificates, which render testimony secret. The whole process is typically English: nominally open, but in fact very, very closed. To be fair, opacity is sometimes needed. The state is entitled to keep secrets, but that’s exactly why the privilege shouldn’t be casually abused. Certainly, I suspect the police case was solid — the CPS don’t charge this stuff lightly.

Then there’s the issue of the Government’s attitude to counterintelligence, which occasionally acts as a brake on diplomacy. It’s difficult to drink champagne at the ambassador’s reception if the bloke who planted microphones in the Ferrero Rochers is on trial at the Old Bailey. Capacity is another factor. When I worked on the Alexander Livinenko investigation, almost 20 years ago, MI5’s Russia desk had atrophied. After 9/11, tracking foreign spies was of limited interest to a government focused on counterterrorism and, this being New Labour, “community cohesion”. Besides, City bankers were happily stuffing their Church’s brogues with pilfered Russian cash, earning Britain the nickname “The Laundry”. Given Litvinenko’s murder was a naked act of radiological terrorism, I’m amazed it never escalated further. Which brings us back to money: pre-2008, New Labour bet the bank on financial services, and lost. It’s a gamble we’ve been paying for ever since, as the Chinese know.

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This brings us to the nub of the problem, one which Keir Starmer seems to have missed: the Government’s blatant gaslighting over China. In the end, whether or not the People’s Republic constitutes an “enemy” feels insultingly nebulous; as far as I know, such considerations have never been much of an issue before. Besides, even Jonathan Hall, the government’s own advisor on national security law, agrees China is an obvious threat. And Hall, the most fair-minded and experienced barrister in his field, isn’t known for partisanship. This speaks to the depths of high-level disagreement over this issue, with China presenting a unique problem for British policymakers. The communist state views close governmental involvement in private enterprise — including intelligence — as a given. Virtually all Chinese technology, business and diplomacy serves the Communist Party’s insatiable appetite for sensitive information.

And so politicians wilfully ignore the obvious: what we see as spying, the Chinese consider due diligence, simply part of Beijing’s game of hegemonic chess with the United States. In this reckoning, the UK is basically irrelevant, whatever hawks like Tom Tugendhat might imply. We’re surely in no position to retaliate with an intelligence campaign of our own, particularly given the parlous state of our economy. And so, despite our allegedly Rolls Royce civil service, diplomatic corps and spooks, Powell seems to have decided that acquiescence is the only game in town. Counterespionage, old boy? Over-egged. Needs to be seen in context. And, perhaps, those Chinese businessmen will rescue our steel industry in return? Just, whatever you do, don’t tell the plebs.

The entire affair suggests a system in meltdown. Dysfunctional, arrogant and — crucially — impoverished, Britain is caught in a trap of its own design, where we chase Chinese pennies like paupers teased by ancien régime aristocrats. All the while, the national security charade continues. The official secrets, the MI5 briefings and intelligence-gathering. All poured into the colander that is the Cabinet Office, leaked, lost or hacked to whoever wants to steal it. Should the scandal end Starmer’s unhappy tenure as Prime Minister, it would be apt. A lawyer to his bones, he seems convinced he can prove that black is white and night is day, that a secret isn’t a secret and an enemy isn’t an enemy.