Keir Starmer is an unforced error machine – have they tried turning him off and on again?
Day two of Keir Starmer’s reset, and it’s impossible not to get caught up in the thrill of revolution. Running as the change candidate against your own administration, fewer than 100 days into it, is a genuinely exciting place to be. Has it been done before? I’ve got a feeling it will be again – and soon.
The weekend’s big news was the vanquishing of Sue Gray, the breakout star of the Sue Gray report. Starmer’s erstwhile chief of staff has been made an “envoy”, which is an honour on a par with having “special projects” in your job title if you work in the media. As for her vanquisher, the chief of staff role has now been subsumed by Starmer’s political chief, Morgan McSweeney. Visually speaking – the only way to judge a book – McSweeney has the look of a supporting actor in a regional detective show. I see him as the local number two to the guy who’s sent to an unfamiliar place (in this case, government) and forced to do something that its denizens are increasingly hostile towards (in this case, be prime minister).
In the wake of Gray’s neutralising, reports that proven campaign strategist McSweeney is dismayed by the “day-to-day machinery of government” and planning a more “data-led” approach feel familiar in a way you can’t quite put your finger on … certainly not unless you’re wearing hazmat gloves. Ideally, I would like Morgan to expand on them in a 20,000 word blog – it might be that we’re on the point of another Shamhattan Project.
For others, meanwhile, the fear is that it could be the machinery of the personnel that is more faultily........
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