Smart and serious, but Keir Starmer has shown himself to be a poor politician

Preparing to write this column, I messaged a former Labour party strategist who had worked in No 10 post ’97 to ask what his assessment was of the first 100 days. The answer was swift – “the first 94 days”. The pedantry made me laugh but felt more like a plea from a hostage negotiator than a note of celebration. And so, it has been. The much-heralded first days of a Labour government, after 14 years of Tory rule, have witnessed one misstep after another.

How different things could have been if Keir Starmer had had the political nous to recognise you need a team working with each other rather than against. If only the prime minister had understood the world of small ‘p’ politics in the workplace where status, titles and authority matter. If only he had possessed real empathy, he would have foreseen the ugly consequence of ambitions thwarted.

If only he had recognised that Sue Gray was already something of a cause célèbre and there would inevitably be those waiting in the wings with sharpened knives. If only he had seen that the real value of Gray lay in her forensic understanding of the machinery of government and not in rooting about in the political weeds. If only he had felt the mood of a nation, he would never have allowed a benefit cut for pensioners to be forever intertwined with a donations scandal. 

And if only he had understood Scotland’s political landscape, he would then have orchestrated a move for Gray into what should have been an exciting and strategically important role of shoring-up support for his party ahead of 2026, of giving Scotland its sense of import, and of basically becoming the devolution glue. 

But then, ironically for a political leader, Starmer just isn’t very political.

He may be very smart and very serious, but the prime minister has shown himself in recent weeks to be a poor politician, a bad communicator, and a clumsy individual. 

Gray, meanwhile, has been portrayed unfairly, her reputation slammed, and the new role, whatever it actually turns out to be, seen at best as a sop and at worst a booby prize, a knee-jerk reaction to a workplace fallout.

And what a lost opportunity. This so-called ‘envoy’ role could have been sold as a huge plus to Scotland, putting devolution back up to the top of the government’s agenda and building that all important bridge from Holyrood to Westminster, and from St Andrew’s House to Whitehall, for Labour to smoothly traverse the hard yards of power.

And while I’m not inclined to praise Boris Johnson, one of the more astute things he ever did was to hire Mark McInnes, Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, former director of the Scottish Conservatives, to join Downing Street as a special adviser to the PM on all matters constitutional. Just as Nicola Sturgeon was calling for a second referendum, McInnes, already a seasoned campaigner having been a director of Better Together during the 2014 referendum, was well-versed in how to push the constitutional buttons and his appointment was catnip to the SNP.

All policy announcements that affected the devolved administrations went first through a McInnes filter. He was a firm fixture in No 10, had the ear of the PM, and was an easily accessible points man between MPs, MSPs and civil servants.

For all his faults, of which there were a great many, Johnson knew he needed to understand Scotland better and while ultimately he proved not to have ‘got it’, nor indeed, we him, the principle and instinct behind the McInnes appointment were correct. 

A major issue for the Blair and Brown governments, going back to ’97, was a false confidence that having so many Scottish MPs solved the Scottish question. But too many saw their lives as London-based. They weren’t here taking the pulse, didn’t see what was coming, nor fully embracing devolution, and, in the end, they were the architects of their own demise.

Starmer has tried to overcome this. He has been a frequent visitor, pre and post election. He and Anas Sarwar are close. But he must not assume presenteeism is the same as being plugged in. A former Labour minister, only this week, told me that welfare changes in particular land very differently in Scotland and he couldn’t understand why someone in the whole of Whitehall hadn’t advised that if you are going to make a policy announcement, like the one about cutting winter fuel payments to all but the very poorest of pensioners, then you think through the Scottish dimension.

Surely, he argued, it’s not beyond the wit of the great brains in the Treasury to find a solution that allows a beleaguered prime minister announcing a hard-sell policy to look as if he understands the harsh reality of living in the northern-most parts of the country where weather is at its cruellest. 

I know Sue Gray and I like her. She and I spent a number of months in long discussions and, no doubt at some point we might both feature as a footnote in a Michael Gove memoir but that’s not a story for the telling here. 

If Starmer had really been looking to elevate devolution, and had an eye not on the next general election but on the one in 2026, he would have taken a leaf out of Johnson’s book and considered good people like Ken Macintosh, for instance, who must surely be ripe for a seat in the House of Lords and a high-profile appointment, or looked outside the party bubble to seek politically astute Scots with their finger firmly on the pulse who understand devolution, can work cross-party to build consensus and who would always be ready to whisper in the PM’s ear about things he shouldn’t do – especially in Scotland.

Keir Starmer is in danger of looking like a mere figurehead for a movement to get a party elected, rather than a prime minister with a mission to reset the nation. If you’re voted in on a single word of ‘change’ then you also have to be ready to complete the sentence.