Henry Newman was special adviser to Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and director of the OpenEurope think tank.
Number 10 has a new Chief of Staff. It’s also got a new Principal Private Secretary – the civil servant who runs Downing Street. But will this new duo be able to arrest the chaos that has engulfed Keir Starmer’s administration? Some have sought to claim that the problems are over-stated, or have been confected by Tory newspapers. Others blame the ‘Comms’.
Complaining about poor ‘Comms’ handling is the most entry-level of political critiques. It’s like people moaning about the fact that there are too many special advisers in Government. Or that politicians don’t answer the question. Poor Comms is typically a symptom of dysfunction, rather than a root cause.
It is undeniable that Keir Starmer’s team has mishandled the media. For example, journalists were given different explanations about Lord Alli’s Downing Street pass. Or, when Starmer decided to pay for some of his freebies, no one seemed clear why he was not paying for others. More recently, simple questions about whether the Prime Minister met Taylor Swift were stonewalled for hours, before a meeting was reluctantly confirmed to have taken place, shortly before newspapers went to print.
The whole cronyism and freebies scandal could have been addressed much more effectively. But that’s not just about Comms in the sense of drafting the right statement for the media, or choosing which broadcaster the Prime Minister sits down with at his Party Conference. It’s much more fundamental.
When the first stories of crony appointments to Whitehall started trickling out, Downing Street should have tried to get ahead of the problem. How do you do that? Assemble all the facts (or as many as you can). Then decide whether to double down or u-turn. If you choose to u-turn, do it cleanly and in one go. If you want to double down, be sure your position is solid and the scandal won’t keep growing.
Yet rather than thinking ahead of the problem, Downing Street reacted angrily to revelations. They responded to posts on TheWhitehallProject by ordering leak inquiries. And when Starmer was asked polite questions by journalists, he too often snapped back angrily.
I worked in a Downing Street which faced plenty of challenges. Every Downing Street does. We certainly made mistakes in the way we responded to scandals or news stories. But when we were buffeted by what one former Prime Minister called ‘events’, we had a strong team to draw on. And, as I discussed with Ben Houchen on The Blueprint, I left Downing Street with a great deal of respect for Boris Johnson.
The decisions Prime Ministers face are difficult. There’s typically limited information, huge time pressure, and lots of public scrutiny. You face choices between what one person tells you is bad and worse, and another insists is dire and awful. And yet you have to decide. And in Downing Street urgent decisions come at you relentlessly, thick and fast.
Keir Starmer can reshuffle his top team. He can change his Chief of Staff for a more experienced ‘political’ campaigner. He can bring in a new Strategic Comms adviser. But none of that can compensate for his weaknesses.
Ultimately the tone of Downing Street is set by the principal. Keir Starmer is obviously prepared to be ruthless. He fired Sue Gray, following what looked like a coordinated briefing campaign against her. While she will always be controversial, including because of her decision to leave the Civil Service and join Labour, there are plenty of civil servants who think Gray has been treated badly by the Prime Minister.
Starmer was then appointed in her place Morgan McSweeney: the very man whose acolytes were, reportedly, leading some of that briefing against Gray. But ruthlessness isn’t a strategy – and it doesn’t demonstrate good judgement.
McSweeney used to run Labour Together, the campaigning organisation which I wrote about previously on ConservativeHome, and which was found to have committed more than 20 breaches of electoral law. Making him Chief of Staff is a bold move for a Prime Minister who has made so much of his supposed commitment to standards.
A new head of ‘Strategic Comms’, James Lyons – is set to arrive shortly. He’s an experienced and talented former journalist, who until recently was working for TikTok – a platform that is, incidentally, banned from official Government devices. I have always been sceptical of ‘Strat’ Comms.
After all, which press officer would set out to be non-strategic? How does the Head of Strategic Comms work with a Director of Communications? And, anyway, what will Lyons be able to achieve if he cannot persuade his ultimate boss to change his approach?
Downing Street does have a new Principal Private Secretary. Former political colleagues speak very highly of Nin Pandit. Some civil servants are less convinced. They note that she is the third person put forward for the role. It’s not even clear that Pandit is a civil servant – it seems she’s still on secondment from the NHS. And she appears to have been handed a temporary promotion to do the job.
Downing Street has hardly been a happy place for officials to work, over the last few weeks. She will want to change that. But some high flyers have been put off applying for jobs there, after watching the way that Starmer made this appointment.
Ultimately Starmer is the key figure in Downing Street’s problems. His party has won a historic majority. And yet Starmer is no Tony Blair – he is not a visionary (albeit, flawed) reformer with great rhetorical gifts. He lacks even the skills of Gordon Brown, although he reportedly shares his dithering and irascibility. Having won this majority, the Prime Minister seems to have little idea how to run Downing Street and less idea of what to do with his government.
