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Starmer needs to tell Labour’s story – before others do it for him

12 0
30.03.2025

What comes to your mind when we ask what the Government at heart wants to achieve – and Keir Starmer’s personal role in that quest? To the first question, my mind went to “improve public services and boost growth”. To the second, I envisage Starmer in his military fatigues  – with a “Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Putin?” pose, an attempt to be defender of European security as well as friend to embattled Ukraine.

Both of these are creditable aims voters will largely agree with. They are very far, however, from defining the Government’s story in a coherent or durable way. As a result, it can feel dominated by a masochistic exercise in public finances and welfare reduction at home (the Spring Statement and its fallout), while bobbing on the uncertain seas of geopolitics. The result is waning popularity (which comes and goes), but perhaps worse: a sense of being unmoored about its own story.

That seems to have dawned on the PM and his key adviser Morgan McSweeney and led to the exit of communications chief Matthew Doyle, and the arrival of the newish strategic communications boss, James Lyons, who has more strategy experience from his days at the NHS and the policy complexity of having run comms for Tik Tok.

Starmer’s trusted personal communications guru, Steph Driver, gets a wider operational role heading daily operations – and it’s no bad thing, frankly, to also have a senior woman running things in a set-up which replicates the tendency of the “in crowd” around PMs to end up as........

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