Day two of Keir Starmer’s reset, and it’s impossible not to get caught up in the thrill of revolution. Running as the change candidate against your own administration, fewer than 100 days into it, is a genuinely exciting place to be. Has it been done before? I’ve got a feeling it will be again – and soon.
The weekend’s big news was the vanquishing of Sue Gray, the breakout star of the Sue Gray report. Starmer’s erstwhile chief of staff has been made an “envoy”, which is an honour on a par with having “special projects” in your job title if you work in the media. As for her vanquisher, the chief of staff role has now been subsumed by Starmer’s political chief, Morgan McSweeney. Visually speaking – the only way to judge a book – McSweeney has the look of a supporting actor in a regional detective show. I see him as the local number two to the guy who’s sent to an unfamiliar place (in this case, government) and forced to do something that its denizens are increasingly hostile towards (in this case, be prime minister).
In the wake of Gray’s neutralising, reports that proven campaign strategist McSweeney is dismayed by the “day-to-day machinery of government” and planning a more “data-led” approach feel familiar in a way you can’t quite put your finger on … certainly not unless you’re wearing hazmat gloves. Ideally, I would like Morgan to expand on them in a 20,000 word blog – it might be that we’re on the point of another Shamhattan Project.
For others, meanwhile, the fear is that it could be the machinery of the personnel that is more faultily wired. Strange, really, that it’s always lowlier jobs that we are told are under existential but reasonable threat from AI, when it does seem as if a robot might have made a better fist of stage-managing Starmer’s last few weeks. Contrary to extensive and vicious briefing over that period, it seems Gray was not actually in charge of the news grid, which probably explains why she didn’t block out a day for her own demotion. Instead, her allies have hotly claimed the grid has been run by the communications team. To which one can only say: was it, though? Certainly not so as you’d notice. Now he has finally acted to deal with dysfunction, much has been made of Starmer’s “ruthlessness”, which I suppose is one take on letting the aggressive leakers and plotters win so decisively. But look, I always tell myself that rewarding bad behaviour is “ruthless” – it makes giving an iPad to a child who is having a tantrum so much more strategically impressive. They won’t be doing that again in a hurry!
Since we’re on the subject of strategic masterstrokes, though, it is worth challenging the prevailing wisdom that Starmer’s hiring of Gray was a coup. Gray was undoubtedly a perfectly well-respected Whitehall fixture, but her chief public cachet as an appointment seemed to come as a result of being a sort of online folk hero. People who were “waiting for the Sue Gray report” were also waiting for another load of deus ex machinas that they were convinced would be the key to all mythologies. Sue Gray stans were the type who made biweekly demands for the last government to “release the Russia report”, even after they already had. Just as various artists are dismissed as music for people who don’t really like music, so “Sue Gray” as an abstract concept always felt like politics for people who don’t really know a lot about politics. Was Starmer himself one of those people? Did he think it looked smart to hire a meme? Part of me suspects he might have.
Westminster’s galaxy brains love a trendy narrative, of course, but the current prevalent take that Starmer is a guy who learns from his mistakes is about three more cock-ups from being seamlessly repurposed into a narrative that he is just a guy who makes too many mistakes. Errors in politics are inevitable, which is why there isn’t a whole lot of capacity for making unforced ones. It’s just possible that this many, this soon, isn’t an asset.
As for the way out of this, that old news grid isn’t throwing up too many potential feelgood days any time soon. Agonising Halloween budget, anyone? This, of course, has been the other piece of odd politics, where Starmer and his chancellor have spent their first weeks and months dropping grim and painful hints that it’s all going to be very grim and painful. According to a variety of reports, the potential targets of the budget have spent those weeks and months making arrangements to protect themselves accordingly. It’s been a bit like the part in a thriller where the bad guy spends so long explaining his clever scheme that there is plenty of time to foil it.
But perhaps the most revealing thing about Starmer, as discussed here previously, is that for the last few years, he decided his persona would be telling people off. Over the other side of the dispatch box, he cycled through a series of Conservative prime ministers who ably assisted him in this task, all the time looking pained, disgusted and superior. It didn’t really matter who it was – Starmer’s comfort zone was sighing, tutting and wincing. This was the very clearly defined persona with which he chose to introduce himself to the British public. And yet, nobody in the world likes being told off. So the thing about someone who’s always telling other people off is that they seem like a bit of a ballache who will eventually be telling you off.
And then there’s that other thing – that almost cast-iron rule that any pedant publicly correcting someone’s grammar or spelling in a public forum will so often make a howler themselves in the course of doing so. You have to be whiter than white yourself if you are going to make a career out of peering judgmentally through your glasses (Oliver Peoples, £294, prescription lenses not included). Starmer hasn’t been.
Which brings us to the other unfortunate conclusion in a week during which a poll places Labour’s lead over the Conservatives at a mere one point – the sense that Labour has expended its political capital for such a tiny quantity of money and fancy things. Don’t get me wrong – 30 or 40 grand is obviously a huge amount of money in terms of clothes and luxury “eyewear” – but it is an absolutely minuscule sum to spaff almost all your electoral goodwill on. At some level, it’s the lack of ambition that bumps most. Not all types of shortsightedness can be fixed with designer glasses.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
