Big ideas. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. At least, that’s what Tom Baldwin – Sir Keir Starmer’s biographer, friend, and interlocutor for a recent anniversary interview in The Observer – would have you believe. The public, he argues, is sick of big ideas like Brexit, which inevitably lead to disappointment. What they want is managerialism of the kind that an unideological former civil servant can deliver.

While Tom is right to characterise Sir Keir as lacking in ideology or big ideas, committed primarily to the notion of public service rather than a clear political cause, he’s wrong to see this as a virtue in a politician. And it is precisely Sir Keir’s lack of a big, overarching, strategic aim and attendant narrative that will lead to his own failure to deliver.

Political communications and policymaking are often discussed as separate pursuits. And for good reason. The skill set needed to be an effective communicator is different from that required to excel at designing policy, and the skill set needed to develop policy in different areas often varies significantly as well. However, in the practice of politics, both skill sets must be deployed towards a single strategy.

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This is why it makes little sense to say that Labour’s problem is just a communications problem. They have repeatedly butchered their political narrative since coming to power a year ago, exposing the complete lack of a strategic aim at the heart of their political project. However, this isn’t just a communications problem; it also infects their policymaking.

What is the point of this........

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