Starmer’s first 100 days
The PM has reshuffled his working-level operatives, casting out former senior civil servant and Chief of Staff, Sue Gray, in favour of political operative, Morgan McSweeney. The change comes after nearly three months of political drift amidst the PM’s focus on rule changes at Labour Party Conference and two month-long parliamentary recesses, one of which saw most of the Labour Party’s parliamentary staff decamp from Westminster for a long-awaited vacation.
Our view:
Gray’s departure as Chief of Staff will make PM Starmer’s regulatory ambitions more difficult in the short-term. Well-respected across Whitehall, Gray’s exit will be viewed negatively by much of the civil service, who enact the PM’s policy platform.
McSweeney’s promotion will help Starmer restore confidence and initiative amongst the media. Under Gray, the new government left a pronounced media vacuum following their election win. That vacuum lent itself to stories of scandal and infighting rather than policy announcements and easy electoral victories that help to build momentum for larger policy announcements.
Starmer will have to be clearer about his policy beliefs and McSweeney, along with Starmer’s head of communications, Matthew Doyle, will need to build No. 10’s media grid i.e., the stories it feeds media for positive coverage, to reestablish policy initiative and credibility with the media.
Our wider view:
PM Starmer has not been acting like he has a 166-seat working majority or a unified party. Haunted by his experience of the Corbyn era, Starmer’s primary focus has been to tighten his grip on internal power. In this regard, he has been mostly successful. He has managed to change the rules governing the Labour Party to make it easier to eject the party’s deputy leader while also making it more difficult for his own leadership to be challenged. Some strategic government departments, such as DESNZ and HM Treasury, have been very quick to get up and running, installing loyal, junior ministers with relevant backgrounds in decision-making roles. These major decisions, however, are internally focused and do nothing to advance the perception amongst the media and policy communities that Starmer was prepared for government or that he is embracing it.
Westminster is running out of patience. The new government has so far struggled to articulate and present its policy platform. Some of this will be inexperience, with most working level staffers having never been in government before. Some will be internal power struggles as Starmer’s nascent Cabinet and special advisor cadre divide over key policy choices. Two sequential parliamentary recesses have also hampered the government’s ability to build the necessary momentum to enact big changes. These relatively reasonable excuses are carrying less water with Westminster’s tastemakers, however, and that dissatisfaction has been accelerated by the ending of the Conservatives’ leadership contest. The longer Starmer’s campaign of reticence and indecision continues, the deeper the sense of dread amongst the business, media, and policymaking communities, many of whom have only ever worked under Conservative rule. That concern has begun to feed into investment and growth decisions, undermining Starmer’s key objectives and Labour’s electoral differentiation from the Conservatives.
Starmer is running out of excuses and will have to start governing. Starmer’s incrementalism and internal focus has begun to sit at odds with the relentlessness of the demands of power, and cracks are beginning to show. A party that won power through near-total party unity has begun to brief against each other in the media to advance their interests, taking potshots at their political rivals. Although Starmer has been portrayed as ruthless, that seems to only be at the highest level, whereas much of the infighting is taking place at the working level and below. The absence of an effective deterrent against infighting will only serve to make this problem worse ahead of the government’s first big set piece, the Budget on 30 October. The government has already rowed back on some of its key fiscal policy announcements in order to uphold its self-determined redlines on tax rises, while little has been down to soften the ground for any positive fiscal announcements.