🔗 Share this article

Sir Keir Starmer traveled to Wales' northern region on Thursday to reveal the construction of a fresh nuclear energy facility. This is a major policy announcement with both local and national implications. Yet, the prime minister did not dedicate extensive time in Wales to advocating answers for the UK's power requirements. Rather, he used the time trying to put an end to the Labour leadership briefing row, informing reporters that Downing Street had not briefed against the health secretary's goals earlier this week.

As such, Sir Keir’s day acted as a small-scale example of what his premiership has now become overall. On the one hand, he desires his administration to be doing, and to be seen to be doing, significant actions. On the other hand, he is incapable to achieve this due to the way he – and, to an extent, the country as a whole – now practices political and governmental affairs.

The Prime Minister cannot change the culture of politics on his own, but he is able to do something about his personal involvement in it. The plain fact is that he could manage the government's core much more effectively than he currently does. Should he achieve this, he could discover that the nation was in less dismay about his government than it currently is, and that he was getting his messages across more effectively.

Personnel Problems in No 10

A number of the issues in Downing Street are about individuals. The interpersonal relations of any No 10 regime are difficult to discern accurately from the exterior. But it seems obvious that Sir Keir fails to make good personnel choices, or stick with them. Maybe he is overly occupied. Perhaps he is not really interested. But he needs to up his game, not do things slowly or incompletely.

• He hesitated about giving the key job of top civil servant to a senior official.
• He made a former official his top aide, then substituted her with Morgan McSweeney.
• He recruited a Treasury figure in from the finance ministry as his deputy.
• His media advisors have chopped and changed.
• Advisors on politics and policy have entered and exited.
• It is a mess.

Systemic Issues at the Core of the Administration

All premiers spend too much time abroad and on international matters, areas where Sir Keir ought to assign more tasks, and too little conversing with MPs and listening to the public. Premiers also spend too much time engaging with the press, which Sir Keir compounds by doing it poorly. Yet leaders cannot claim to be surprised when their politically appointed staff, who are often party activists or politically ambitious, cross lines or become the story, as Mr McSweeney has recently.

The biggest issues, though, are structural. It would be beneficial to believe that Sir Keir read the Institute for Government’s spring 2024 study on overhauling the centre of government. His inability to grip these issues in the summer or afterward suggests he did not. The often abject performance of Labour’s time in office suggests IfG proposals like restructuring the functions of the central government office and Downing Street, and dividing the jobs of cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, are now urgent.

The dominant political role of prime ministers greatly exceeds the assistance provided to them. As a result, everything currently suffers, and much is done badly or neglected.

This isn't Sir Keir’s fault alone. He is the casualty of past failures as well as the architect of present ones. Yet individuals who expected Sir Keir would take control of the core and take the machinery of government seriously have been disappointed. Unfortunately, the primary casualty from this failure is Sir Keir personally.