If Rishi Sunak had clung to power until the very end of the five-year term that Boris Johnson won in 2019, he would still be prime minister today. He had until 28 January next year to hold the election. The equivalent deadline for Keir Starmer is 21 August 2029. That is a horizon beyond the reach of reliable political forecasting, even if the second half of this decade turns out less volatile than the first. More turbulence seems likelier.
But Labour’s majority is much bigger than the one Sunak lost and Starmer’s character contains none of the traits that made Johnson such a wellspring of chaos. With just 121 Tory MPs, Kemi Badenoch will struggle to have much impact in parliament. She must also compete for relevance and attention with Nigel Farage, puffed up on proximity to Donald Trump.
Not much about the coming years is predictable, but it is safe to assume the government will have unimpeded power to turn its manifesto into law. That should be a banality, hardly worth stating. But the stability of Labour’s position is shrouded in a fog of bad news, badly handled – peeved pensioners one week; furious farmers the next.
It doesn’t help that much of the media treats the mere fact of a Labour government as an offence against nature. Aside from that bias, there is a mood of residual frenzy at Westminster, as though everyone is still twitching to the political tempo set by frantic Tories hurtling towards defeat. Starmer’s politics have a different pulse. It is the rhythm of a parliamentary cycle, not the breathless tick-tock of social media.
People who have worked closely with the Labour leader say he is remarkably indifferent to bad press. That is commendable when it allows sustained focus on longer term goals. It is a liability if it means surrendering control of the narrative around government effectiveness and ethics, which feeds Labour MPs’ jitters about the slide in their poll ratings since the election.
Those close to the centre say much of the early dysfunction at No 10 – tangled chains of command; poisonous office politics; operational stasis – has been resolved since Sue Gray’s departure and replacement by Morgan McSweeney as the prime minister’s chief of staff. Starmer seems to have understood that you can’t counter a chorus of jeers with dignified silence. There is now a sense that Downing Street, while not yet gripping the news agenda, has a more professional purchase on it.
A speech on Thursday is meant to bring new clarity to the government’s programme. The missions that Starmer has previously cited as his guiding purpose will be quantified with “milestones” to be reached under a “plan for change” – shorter NHS waiting lists; less crime; falling immigration; more houses; children starting school readier to learn. Progress in some areas will be measurable with specific targets.
Labour strategists say this is the long-planned execution of a project that started in opposition and not a “relaunch”. But it is hard to escape that word when voters have to be told what they can expect from a prime minister five months after electing him.
The delay is partly a function of how steep the learning curve is in transition from opposition to power. Vertical, by all accounts. There has also been much grinding of gears as ministers discover the limitations of Britain’s archaic machinery of government. That is why Starmer talks about a “complete rewiring” of the state as part of his plan. He is expressing the frustration that every prime minister feels on discovering that No 10 levers don’t energise a smart, integrated state, generating change on the ground that voters feel as improvement in the way the country is run.
This isn’t a partisan issue but it acquired a venomous tone under the Tories as an ideological neurosis about an idle, obstructive civil service that hated Brexit, was captured by a nefarious “blob” of vested interests and worked too often from home. Incoming Labour ministers’ first task was to restore trust and confidence among bullied and demoralised officials. But they also see that some of their predecessors’ less paranoid criticisms were justified: that the civil service is poorly equipped for risk and innovation; suspicious of outside expertise; intellectually calcified in silos within silos. It is not set up to tackle social problems that sprawl between traditional departmental jurisdictions.
There is no enthusiasm in Labour circles for Dominic Cummings, but some cabinet ministers acknowledge a kernel of rationality in the anti-bureaucracy agenda that Johnson’s chief of staff pursued with narcissistic abandon. The task, they say, is extracting the sane essence and applying it as reform instead of vandalism.
Supporters of the newly appointed cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, say he is just the man to strike that balance – a veteran civil servant and pragmatic problem solver, Starmerite in spirit, who can be trusted to undertake institutional rewiring without smashing everything. Sceptics say that means ineffectual tinkering.
Another complaint is that the prime minister’s plan looks like a revival of New Labour’s target-driven “deliverology”, which achieved results on the desired metrics but with a cost in perverse consequences elsewhere. Liz Lloyd, Starmer’s recently recruited director of policy and innovation, was Tony Blair’s deputy chief of staff. Michael Barber, the former head of Blair’s delivery unit, is also advising the current prime minister. Enthusiasts for the Blairite model counter that no subsequent administration has found a better way to get results out of Whitehall. The Tories gave up trying and broke stuff instead.
Lurking in the background of these conversations is the issue of Starmer’s inscrutable reticence as a storyteller. He doesn’t cultivate emotional investment in the journey he is trying to lead. No one seriously denies that this is a problem. But since telegenic charisma isn’t something people acquire suddenly at the age of 62, there doesn’t seem much point complaining about the prime minister’s lack of it. He won power with other qualities, including his capacity to identify what, or who, isn’t working, and make the change with unsentimental ruthlessness.
When Labour MPs fret about their rocky start in government, they remind themselves that Starmer has form when it comes to getting things right by first getting them wrong. There was no majestic sweep to victory, just a grinding, dogged strategy of eliminating the obstacles in his path. He has always said he was on a 10-year mission and currently he only has five to work with. He knows he won’t get a second term if voters can’t count the upside from the first one in their pockets and feel it in the public services they use. He also knows that won’t happen unless the transmission mechanisms of the state work better. It may not be a song of heart-swelling hope, but that doesn’t discount it as a part of a viable strategy for reelection.
Of course, it is easier to forecast failure when the horizon is darkened with global crises and economic shocks of the kind that ruin incumbent governments. Starmer’s stilted manner and ponderous style make it hard to cast him as a leader with some mould-breaking, exceptional ability to weather the coming storm. But there is also something about his record that means you just can’t rule it out.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
