Many great prime ministers overcome a shaky start – but Keir Starmer’s window is closing fast

 

Many great prime ministers overcome a shaky start – but Keir Starmer’s window is closing fast

Anthony Seldon

Successful PMs learn on the job, and Labour’s leader needs to start 2025 by showing his party and the country he has done so

 

Wed 1 Jan 2025 07.00 CET

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/01/prime-minister-keir-starmer-labour-leader-2025

 

The dismissive verdicts and dire polls after Keir Starmer’s first few months in power should not unduly perturb him. Britain’s best prime ministers all faced considerable challenges, especially early on. Clement Attlee may rank as Labour’s most outstanding leader, but his position was far from secure at the time and he would have been ousted early but for the loyal support of the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin. Margaret Thatcher endured many dark weeks and months, only feeling confident of her position after victory in the Falklands war, three years into her premiership. The end of year verdicts on Starmer’s premiership have highlighted his errors and the bad economic news, but they have precious little positive to offer beyond “he must find a narrative”.

 

Steady on, though. Starmer believes he has a narrative, a very clear one that he has internalised in his head – which is that as Labour leader from 2020, he took a series of unpopular decisions and faced endless criticism, but he prevailed and won one of the biggest majorities in history. On the same basis, he thinks that tough medicine from him now will see the party rewarded with another handsome majority in 2028 or 2029. It’s neat. It’s compelling. But it’s a fantasy – and a dangerous misunderstanding of the kind of narrative a PM needs. If Starmer continues to hold to it he will fall, and Britain will notch up another failed premiership when what it needs most is competent government.

 

Prime ministers lack the time for reflection. All the PMs I have written about regret the lack of time spent thinking through what they were trying to achieve. They repeatedly sacrificed strategy to urgency, the mantra to the media. Only in hindsight do they see this clearly. So what should Starmer do? He could start by using the few days left before the heat of the political battle reignites to reflect more on the past year. No previous experience can prepare a prime minister for life in Downing Street. No prime minister has been the finished article on arrival. Successful incumbents learn on the job. “The PM doesn’t seem to understand what the job is,” senior figures in the British state tell me. Well, prime minister, you need to learn, and quickly.

 

Most prime ministers realise too late, if at all, how to do the job. But lessons can be learned from successful premierships. First, the job is to be captain of the ship. Starmer agonises over whether he is more chair or chief executive, preferring the former. Neither designation is right. The job of the prime minister is to stay on the command deck at all times, surveying the horizon. Prime ministers go wrong when they try to sort out divisions and details below decks themselves, or wander off spending too much time abroad. Prime ministers love to travel, and Starmer has proved adept at forging relationships with foreign leaders. But any visits should be sparse, strategic and swift. They must learn to do what only the PM can do.

 

Next, every successful prime minister defines a clear direction and purpose for their government. This is what having a narrative means. The country knew where Attlee and Thatcher were destined; less so where James Callaghan and David Cameron were steering the ship, naval man though the former was. Starmer made light at a pre-Christmas party of having had “seven key pillars, six milestones” and “five missions”. Joking aside, these multiple lists are a nonsense, and he must see it. Without one clear direction, premierships are repeatedly blown off course. This is going to be the year when his real work starts. There will be more bad economic news, difficult May elections, strikes in public services, a fraught spending review, and further turbulence from sceptics in the party. All this before he reckons with the shock waves of a Trump presidency and an ascendant Reform UK party.

 

The government will only stay the course with its focus unequivocally on generating growth, which barely rose under the Conservatives after 2010. The prime minister, not the chancellor of the exchequer, is first lord of the Treasury. For much of the first half of the life of the political office, the PM was the chancellor – so fundamental is financial health to the whole notion of the role. Without growth, Starmer’s entire project will flounder. Securing it must take most of his time. Making business into allies, advancing pro-growth policies, and bringing top talent into Downing Street; all these need to happen now.

 

Starmer’s single most avoidable error was arriving in Downing Street without his own cabinet secretary, principal private secretary or national security adviser. He made unsatisfactory appointments to many other posts too, including his chief of staff. Bringing back the experienced Jonathan Powell and Liz Lloyd, who served as chief of staff and deputy chief of staff respectively in Tony Blair’s No 10, are steps in the right direction. But Starmer needs many more such accomplished figures whom he can trust. Every successful prime minister in history had a superb team.

 

Finally, Starmer needs to start acting like a prime minister. Second-rate leaders blame others, as he has repeatedly done with the Conservatives and latterly the civil service. Sue Gray is blamed for the failure to prepare better for office, and the lack of clarity once in No 10, but Starmer alone was responsible for Gray’s appointment as his chief of staff. Anyone who knew her and knew the job could have told him that, brilliant though she is, she wasn’t right for the role. The prime minister needs to stop being tribal and hear a wider and better range of views. He has barely listened to former prime ministers or to others, like the Institute for Government, who are ready to offer wise counsel.

 

Other PMs who had shaky starts went on to make the cut. So can Starmer. He must make it. But if he has not significantly improved by mid 2025, his own party and the country may conclude that his uncertain start was not an aberration but an indication of chronic unsuitability. Were Britain then to have a seventh prime minister in under 10 years, foreign investors and governments, on whom British prosperity depends, will draw the same conclusion as increasing numbers at home: a new leader is needed.

 

Anthony Seldon’s Starmer at 10 will be published after he leaves No 10; he is the author of The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister