Sir Keir Starmer has fallen hard since his moment of glory, just 19 months ago, when he led Labour to a landslide election victory.
He is just one of four leaders ever to have secured a Commons majority for Labour. And yet, this week he was on the brink of losing his job. Even now he has every chance of being his party’s shortest-serving prime minister in history.
Starmer is partly at fault for his own plight. He entered No 10 with little sense of what he actually wanted to do with the job. Though he acknowledged that “tough decisions” would be needed, he never prepared the ground for them with the public or his MPs – leading to the worst of both worlds on issues such as winter fuel payments, which Starmer axed for most pensioners but then ended up bringing back.
And there are, of course, serious questions about his judgement, in particular the ill-fated decision to make Peter Mandelson his Ambassador to Washington despite what was already known about the New Labour veteran’s ties to millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The stay of execution he was given by his Cabinet may not last long. There is rumbling discontent in the Labour party, and the country as a whole, about Starmer’s performance. But there is no certainty about who could replace him, or what they would do differently to deliver on the promises Labour made to the nation at the last general election.
Despite his errors, most people think Starmer is a fundamentally decent and competent man, with a strong record of public service before he entered Parliament. His successful tenure as Leader of the Opposition suggests he is not as politically ham-fisted as he seems.
If he is turfed out, he will be the latest in a growing line of failed prime ministers. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, now Starmer – why is it that experienced politicians who had major achievements under their belt before they got to No 10 are repeatedly foundering in the highest office?
It is not enough to claim that each one of these individuals was personally inadequate, that replacing them with someone a bit better is the answer to the problem. There is something more profoundly wrong with how Westminster and Whitehall work.
One issue is that prime ministers are simply too busy to step back, stop and think about what they are doing. This is surely one explanation for why Starmer repeatedly failed to see major issues coming down the track – he just does not have the time. During his time in the Treasury, Sunak was seen by officials as something of a freak for doing his own research on economic policy; the idea of a prime minister taking a break to clear their headspace is unthinkable. There is always another event to give a banal speech at, another charity campaigner to meet, another social media clip to record.
The 24/7 media landscape is partly to blame. Starmer, like some of his predecessors, has sought to broaden his communications strategy beyond the traditional newspapers and broadcasters: a worthy aim, but in practice it just means doing ever more, under unrelenting scrutiny. No wonder leaders slip up.
This Prime Minister has also come to the same conclusion as some of his predecessors: the civil service is as much an obstacle to delivery as a mechanism for it. Officials work within a system that rewards people who stay out of trouble more than those who take risks. Starmer says he has plans to fix this, but it may be too little too late.
The final problem is that MPs have become too empowered. In principle, it seems a good thing that backbenchers are more willing to think for themselves and defy the orders of party bosses. In practice, the relentless pressure MPs get – from social media, mass email campaigns and vote-tracking websites in particular – undermines a parliamentary system based on party loyalty.
MPs are picked almost at random through opaque mechanisms, and then given a unique power to dethrone prime ministers and change the fate of the country. Few have shown themselves calm enough to think for the long term, rather than reacting to the day’s headlines and tweetstorms.
It remains possible that a truly remarkable leader – a Thatcher, or a Blair – could bulldoze through these obstacles. That is certainly what Nigel Farage’s fans hope he could do in Downing Street. But we should not rely on the exceptional.
What happened to government that was, even if not spectacular, just good enough? Where is our Macmillan, Wilson, Major, Cameron? The quality of leaders has not necessarily declined – but average prime ministers are no longer empowered to do an average job.
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