As the popularity of his government has nosedived in recent weeks, Keir Starmer has turned up the heat on his cabinet ministers. Since early last month, individual secretaries of state have been summoned by the prime minister to attend 90-minute, one-to-one interrogations to check on their work, department by department.
Starmer’s officials insist that no one in Downing Street or Whitehall is panicking. Not yet, anyway. But just six months on from his landslide general election victory, the meetings are evidence of a sense of urgency and unease, and proof that the hard realities of government have dawned.
