A Labour MP I spoke to recently is in despair at the Prime Minister. ‘He’s insane’, he told me. ‘How can he say that? How can he honestly think there’s huge amounts of spare housing? It’s mad.’
Another MP was even more blunt. ‘I want to scream,’ they said.
The subject of their ire – or the latest subject – was Keir Starmer’s appearance at Monday’s Liaison Committee with Parliament’s Select Committee chairs. Asked where he was going to find the extra housing needed to support the rising tide of homeless and asylum seekers, Sir Keir breezily declared: ‘Oh, there is lots of housing and many local authorities that can be used, and we’re identifying where it can be used.’
When the non-plussed chairman Dame Meg Hillier pressed him on precisely where all this spare accommodation was located, he frantically backtracked. He would ‘write to her’ with the details, he said.
It’s a letter that is never going to arrive. Or even be written. The spare accommodation obviously doesn’t exist. In reality, the nation is facing a housing crisis. And even if it wasn’t, the idea that any spare housing stock could simply be handed over to refugees would be politically unsustainable.
So in the aftermath of the Prime Minister’s latest gaffe, his supporters embarked on what, by now, is the well-worn but thankless task of explaining away his blunder. There had been some ‘confusion’, they said. Others whispered he had been ‘poorly briefed’. One told me in a suitably conspiratorial manner: ‘It’s another example of how Downing Street isn’t structured properly. He needs people in there who will stop this stuff happening.’
I’ve heard all this before. Though it normally begins some time into a prime minister’s second term of office. The critics begin to break cover. But they don’t have the courage to openly attack what, in politics, is known as ‘The Principal’. In other words, the senior politician who is actually in charge of things.
So instead they turn their fire on his inner-circle. And one or two senior named aides. In recent weeks the subject of this briefing has been Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. At one point the anger directed at him became so intense that it was described as nothing less than a desire for ‘regime change’.
Keir Starmer does not have a problem with his inner circle. Or the ‘structures’ within Downing Street. The real issue is Keir Starmer himself, writes Dan Hodges
But within the alcoves and cloisters of Westminster other, less well known names are mentioned. It’s a part of the political insider’s ritual. ‘I’m told Starmer isn’t happy with X’. ‘A lot of people are blaming Y for the latest screw up.’
Convention dictates these anonymous apparatchiks are not identified.
But the reality, in this case, is that Keir Starmer does not have a problem with his inner circle. Or the ‘structures’ within Downing Street. The real issue is Keir Starmer himself.
There has long been a perception that the Prime Minister is not a good politician. Indeed, in the past he has attempted to trade off this, framing himself as someone who operates above the duplicitous cut and thrust of Whitehall.
But it should not require a politician to understand the current parlous state of housing in this country. Or to realise the festering fury amongst the British people at the thought illegal migrants are being prioritised in the allocation of scarce and dwindling public resources.
And the finger of blame certainly shouldn’t be pointed at the Prime Minister’s advisors when he cannot even get through a single sitting of the Liaison Committee without dropping such a spectacular clanger. But Keir Starmer is starting to develop form as someone who likes to throw his staff under the bus.
The most blatant example was his interview a couple of weeks ago when he disowned his ‘Island of Strangers’ speech. ‘I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell,’ he says. ‘I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either’, he told the Observer. This is classic Starmer. Shine the spotlight on the staff, whilst pretending you’re protecting them.
In a separate interview he said ‘my rule of leadership is, when things go well you get the plaudits; when things don’t go well you carry the can. I take responsibility for all the decisions made by this government. I do not talk about staff and I’d much prefer it if everybody else didn’t.’
When chairman Dame Meg Hillier pressed Starmer on precisely where all this spare accommodation was located, he frantically backtracked
In recent weeks, anger from critics over the Government has been directed at Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney
Funny then, that today there has been another briefing. According to Bloomberg, ‘Keir Starmer has asked to be involved in policy-making earlier and to be given more detail following the welfare debacle, as allies say a cultural issue was developing in No 10 where the PM was bounced into decisions’.
Poor Keir. If only those pesky officials and staffers didn’t keep bouncing him into delivering speeches he hadn’t properly read, or policies he hadn’t properly scrutinised.
The truth is Downing Street is now starting to resemble Joe Biden’s White House. For years the ailing US president’s advisors had to scramble around covering up their charge’s growing infirmity. And now No 10 advisors have to engage in the same exercise, attempting to explain, rationalise and justify Keir Starmer’s blunders.
The issue is not, as the Prime Minister’s ‘allies’ would have people believe, that he is not furnished with sufficient detail to enable him to effectively run the country. It’s that he’s congenitally useless at it.
If the Prime Minister cannot spend an hour sitting in front of half a dozen MPs without needing to be spoon-fed like a child the information Britain is suffering a housing crisis, he has no business being in the job. If he genuinely cannot deliver a speech without having properly read it first, and processed its contents, he should not be allowed anywhere near a podium containing the Government crest. If he is genuinely attempting to drive through policies that he doesn’t understand then he should step down, and hand his position to someone who can understand them.
Harry Truman famously had a sign strategically positioned on his White House desk that read ‘The Buck Stops Here’. Keir Starmer may as well have one that states ‘I Have No Idea What This Sign Says, It Was Written By Someone Else And I Haven’t Bothered To Read It’.
Keir Starmer’s first year in office has been a disaster. And that’s not because of his aides. It’s not because of his officials. It’s not because of his speechwriter. It’s because of Keir Starmer himself.
And a real prime minister would have the dignity, courage and self-awareness to recognise it.
