Keir starmer

Dear wannabe leaders of Britain. What a lot of you there are! I’ve been writing about leadership and the craft of politics for 25 years and I’m sick of watching the same mistakes repeated. I’m keen to help. So listen up Nigel, Kemi, Zack, Ed, Ed, Andy, Angela and Wes – and you Keir, it’s never too late to learn. 1) TL;DR: If you have no time for impertinent journalists, here’s the executive summary. You need a plan, plus strategy and tactics to deliver it. You need a narrative to explain it to voters. You need the charisma and application to take your party, the civil service and the country with you. And you need to build a team to do the bits that you cannot accomplish alone.

When Morgan McSweeney concluded his evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about the Peter Mandelson affair, a senior Labour figure remarked: “What really did we learn from all this? That Keir made a bad decision, wants someone else to blame and didn’t really know what was going on in his own government. Fancy that!” The fact that 14 Labour MPs voted to refer the Prime Minister to the Privileges Committee (the body which forced Boris Johnson from the political stage) – and a total of 53 recorded no vote in his defense – is far from a ringing endorsement of his leadership. But the significance of the Mandelson hearings has been misunderstood.

When Morgan McSweeney concluded his evidence on Tuesday to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about the Mandelson affair, a senior Labour figure remarked: ‘What really did we learn from all this? That Keir made a bad decision, wants someone else to blame and didn’t really know what was going on in his own government. Fancy that!’ The fact that 14 Labour MPs voted to refer the Prime Minister to the Privileges Committee (the body which forced Boris Johnson from the political stage) – and a total of 53 recorded no vote in his defence – is far from a ringing endorsement of his leadership. But the significance of the Mandelson hearings has been misunderstood.

Somewhere in the vast array of documents the Cabinet Office has gathered on the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador in Washington, there is a text message which Keir Starmer sent the night before he made the announcement. ‘You’ll be brilliant in challenging circumstances,’ he told Mandelson. ‘And after many years of our discussions, we get to work together side by side. I really look forward to that.’ The message was leaked after one of Starmer’s most difficult weeks in charge, a week which senior civil servants believe proves, once and for all, that the Prime Minister himself will never be brilliant in challenging circumstances.

As public messages of support go, it scored pretty low on the conviction-o-meter. “Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom acknowledged that he ‘exercised wrong judgment’ when he chose his Ambassador to Washington,” said President Donald Trump on Truth Social last night. “I agree, he was a really bad pick. Plenty of time to recover, however! President DJT.” Uh oh. None of the trademark capitalization, which suggests Donald’s heart isn’t really in it. Some aide must have just spoken to him about Keir Starmer’s Peter Mandelson crisis, or perhaps a news story came to his attention.

When John Healey was asked, onstage at the London Defence Conference, whether the armed forces were “ready” for war, the Defence Secretary replied: “Yes.” One of those present says: “That was greeted with near incredulity in the room.” Another attendee compared Healey’s plight to someone “playing French cricket,” with critics from all sides hurling balls at his ankles while he tried to bat them away. “You can’t score any runs in French cricket.” George Robertson, Healey’s most respected Labour predecessor and a former secretary general of NATO, was not present; he was in Scotland celebrating his 80th birthday. But he returned to give a withering interview to the FT and a speech.

The energy price surge caused by war in the Middle East has sent shockwaves through Westminster. It has pushed up inflation and the cost of borrowing, causing panic in the cabinet and the recognition that government intervention could be needed on a vast scale to support the cost of living. The UK Prime Minister told a private audience: "The assumption that the growth of the developed countries can proceed steadily on the basis of cheap energy has been shattered almost overnight." He further observed: "The problem is not simply one of inflation. It is the whole structure of the economy." In the Treasury there is something approaching a siege mentality. The Chancellor has "to spend [her] time firefighting.