“Who is gripping?” With these three words, the late Jeremy Heywood ruled Whitehall. The demand would stir his aides into action: calls would be made, emails sent, each carrying the imprimatur of the Cabinet Secretary and with it, the person he served: the Prime Minister. This was how the system worked. And yet, with Heywood’s passing, so too, it seems, has the grip on the system.
The old system was far from ideal, of course. Successive Prime Ministers came to depend on Heywood’s personal authority in a way that now seems unhealthy. He may have been a skilled courtier, but a perception has grown since his death that Heywood had built a machine that only he could manipulate.
As a result, Keir Starmer has inherited a system that is broken; the state can no longer corral the government machine into action. Everyone in Whitehall says the same thing: the authority of the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, is shot, and with it his department. And this matters. Without an organising authority, the state stands inert, propelled only by its own momentum.
In its place, No. 10 has become even more important — the last institution able to impose its authority on the patchwork of governmental principalities that make up the British state. And yet, No 10 itself is not fit for purpose either — a creaking Georgian terrace without institutional knowledge or technological wherewithal. As such, the Treasury dominates Britain’s remaining source of institutional power and strength.
Starmer’s first two months as Prime Minister are testament to this depressing reality. Devoid of any organising narrative, it has allowed itself to be defined instead by the ongoing winter fuel fiasco. And to peer behind the front door of No 10 is to glimpse a situation that is even worse than it might seem.
Since winning power, it has been striking how quickly a sense of factionalism and distrust seems to have taken hold of a team that, before the election, was defined by its sense of collective mission. Back then, everyone was pulling in the same direction. Today, briefings find their way into the press with an alarming regularity: tales of unhappiness, fall outs, power grabs and hierarchical squabbling. Far from being the experienced steady hand who would be able to grip the Whitehall machine with immediate effect, Starmer today looks more like an early Tony Blair who had never worked in government before becoming Prime Minister.
One reason for the briefing wars, according to those involved, is that there were simply not enough jobs in government to go around. As a result, noses have been put out of joint. This, though, is the most benign explanation. Those I spoke to said the briefings were not just from embittered former aides, but reflected a genuinely uneasy atmosphere in No. 10, with a clique forming around Sue Gray on the soft-Left wing of the party and another around “the boys” who have tended to push a more “blue Labour” agenda, focused on the priorities of the working class. Rumours of a division between Gray and Morgan McSweeney, however, are overdone, according to those I spoke with. At the heart of the briefings, therefore, lies a battle to shape the nature of the government — a battle which should have been settled long before the assumption of power.
In Jonathan Powell’s memoir of his time as Blair’s chief of staff, The New Machiavelli, he quotes the observation that new leaders must learn quickly on the job to “defend what Fortune has placed in their lap”. He warns that in modern democratic societies there is no choice but to move quickly and boldly in the first 100 days, for this will define much of the rest of their time in office. “A new leader,” he writes, “has to have prepared in Opposition for that sprint in government.”
As Leader of the Opposition, Starmer seemed to know what he was doing. He had hired Gray directly from the Cabinet Office so that he could hit the ground running. Gray knew Whitehall intimately, warts and all, and surely would have formulated a plan to deal with the gaping hole of authority now sitting at the centre of the British state. So why, two months in, has nothing changed? Long-talked-about plans to create a beefed-up “Department of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet” have — so far — failed to materialise.
Part of the reason for this is the hangover from the Truss catastrophe. Having seen what happened following her sudden removal of officials such as the Treasury’s Tom Scholar, Starmer and his team are determined to avoid any such mistakes. However, the danger is now one of overcorrection. Decisions must be made, the centre gripped and the government’s central purpose explained.
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