{"id":88723,"date":"2024-07-06T00:19:26","date_gmt":"2024-07-06T00:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/06\/laura-kuenssberg-keir-starmer-takes-the-reins-after-impotence-of-opposition\/"},"modified":"2024-07-06T00:19:26","modified_gmt":"2024-07-06T00:19:26","slug":"laura-kuenssberg-keir-starmer-takes-the-reins-after-impotence-of-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/06\/laura-kuenssberg-keir-starmer-takes-the-reins-after-impotence-of-opposition\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Kuenssberg: Keir Starmer takes the reins after impotence of opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Laura<\/div>


\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
\n

\n
By\u00a0Laura Kuenssberg,\u00a0<\/span>@bbclaurak<\/a>,\u00a0Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\"GettyGetty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

\u201cA face of thunder.\u201d As opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer would go back to his office after the Queen\u2019s Speech deeply frustrated after witnessing the Conservatives\u2019 plans laid out year after year. He carried the curse of the leader of the opposition \u2013 irrelevance.<\/p>\n

He formally became prime minister at lunchtime on Friday, but for a number of months now, he has also known that the British state has been quietly preparing for his arrival in Downing Street.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have every hour of his first day, every day of his first week, every week of his first month, mapped out,” is how one Whitehall source put it. What promise this victory holds is not going to fail because of a lack of homework or planning.<\/p>\n

Such is the level of preparation that the Treasury, in anticipation of the arrival of the first female chancellor, has apparently boxed in the urinal that has long been a feature of the chancellor\u2019s private bathroom. Not exactly bog standard stuff, you could say (sorry!)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

Rachel Reeves is one of the prominent figures in Sir Keir\u2019s team, among them also Wes Streeting and Bridget Phillipson, who have been deeply involved for months in getting ready to govern. Senior civil servants and their shadow ministers have been talking for some time and Sir Keir and some of his team have been regular attendees at Cobra meetings, and security briefings.<\/p>\n

One, now a cabinet minister, told me: \u201cWe have got personal relationships with the permanent secretary and the senior officials already.\u201c<\/p>\n

The former civil servant Sue Gray, who will now be the PM’s chief of staff, has been in regular contact with Cabinet Secretary Sir Simon Case, since the turn of the year. After the headlines of the Labour leader’s missions had been turned into policies, they were then made into \u201cimplementation plans” for government. The calls between Ms Gray and Sir Simon became almost daily.<\/p>\n

There has been some perhaps less obvious assistance, too. At least two former Conservative ministers have been helping them prepare, including one recent cabinet minister who told me: \u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous we just hand over a trillion pound budget\u201d without the kind of transition that an American president, for example, enjoys.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The plan for government<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
\n

Despite the scale of victory, the Labour manifesto, based on Sir Keir\u2019s mission, is not about to be usurped with a huge bold unknown move.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no secrets,\u201d one senior figure told me. Another source told me the election result is a vindication of the PM’s cautious approach and it is not a \u201cvote for a more radical, bold approach\u201d.<\/p>\n

Expect strong resistance to any calls from the left that the scale of the change \u201cproves\u201d Labour could have been more radical in what they put forward. Some in his party may demand a rapid cessation of arm sales to Israel. Labour losing seats and nearly losing others to opponents standing on a pro-Gaza platform will only make those calls more urgent.<\/p>\n

Other demands may include an overt commitment to safeguard public services, a longer-term promise to remove the two-child benefit cap and even regular trade union access to Number 10. But with a massive majority, there is no suggestion that Sir Keir will feel he is in the mood to redraft his carefully worked out plans.<\/p>\n

Instead the new prime minister has held up the result as a rejection of the Tory Party and a vote for a different type of leadership, and frankly, less drama.<\/p>\n

But his style, and the gradual way in which his plans were built over a period of many months, belies some very significant changes Labour wants. These include an expansion of rights for workers, a rapid overhaul of the planning system and a state energy company.<\/p>\n

In the short-term, new ministers are likely to do everything they can to talk up how they want to get the economy to grow. It won\u2019t be entirely coincidental if within a few weeks, companies start writing cheques for the UK, or that pent -up investments that were waiting for a change of government start to come through.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

And it\u2019s likely that before long there will be new draft laws to give more powers to the government\u2019s independent economic watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility. One of the big first decisions the new chancellor needs to make is when to hold a huge review of the public finances with the teeth clenching decisions it might involve.<\/p>\n

The so-called spending review, which portions out cash between departments, expires at the end of the year. It sounds like a dull decision but it is massively important. Ms Reeves will have to decide whether to roll over the existing Tory spending plans for a year, to give her more space to work out a longer-term plan, or crack on with her own review by the end of 2024. Watch this space.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Beware of drift<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
\n

The Labour mantra in public, and in private has been not just to win, but to be ready to get things done. In their mind are what they see as the lessons of New Labour and Tony Blair\u2019s frustration with the slow pace of change. One new minister tells of a meeting where they briefed the former PM about their plans and he warned them: \u201cI so deeply regret that we didn\u2019t hit the ground running on reform.”<\/p>\n

\u201cKeir has taken this incredibly seriously,” the minister told me.<\/p>\n

Appointing the cabinet\u2019s been done, but there are dozens of other MPs to receive government jobs, with advisers and new members of the House of Lords. They include the former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance who has been appointed as a minister of state at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m told the former health secretary, Alan Milburn, is likely to take a senior, though not ministerial, role at the Department of Health to help drive waiting lists down. Other departments and other appointments might throw up some interesting names.<\/p>\n

But for all the preparation and experience, the receipt of power and responsibility is huge.<\/p>\n

One official said of incoming prime ministers: \u201cThey come in exhausted from this now-seemingly endless campaign, they come in elated, they appoint their cabinet \u2013 that is a great moment for them. And then sour-faced people like me say, \u2018now, can I talk to you about the end of the world!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Sir Keir is in a hurry not just to show the public that his government can actually get things done after years of visible political shambles. But he\u2019s also been counselled to make the most of the early goodwill from his vast ranks of new victors, before, inevitably in time, however long, the Parliamentary Labour Party starts to flex its muscles.<\/p>\n

One former Labour adviser told me, he should “Go quick! Go Fast, before they find the loos!”<\/p>\n

It is true that his team has tried very hard to control the quality of candidates, and many loyalists will be picking up their pass for the first day in the big palace soon. But as former prime ministers have found, bright-eyed new recruits don\u2019t stay eager forever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Problems and Pitfalls<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
\n

Labour\u2019s scale of victory is something they could have hardly dreamed of not so long ago. But their elation this weekend doesn\u2019t make some of the very tricky realities of governing go away. Whenever she\u2019s been near a microphone in recent months, Ms Reeves has been warning of what she calls the \u201cworst economic inheritance since the Second World War\u201c or as she said at her election count in Leeds \u201cthere is not a huge amount of money\u201d.<\/p>\n

Waiting lists are sky high. Prisons are overcrowded. Millions of families are struggling to make ends meet. This was an election result driven partly by voters\u2019 clear feeling that nothing works.<\/p>\n

That sense is not confined to public perception. As one senior Whitehall official told me: \u201cThings really are worse on the inside than you can see from outside.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Labour\u2019s ministerial teams have been discussing how to tell the public how bad, in their view, things really are. No sooner had Mr Streeting been appointed health secretary than he said: \u201cFrom today the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

A sceptic might also say Labour will be keen to brand the problems once and for all as the Tories\u2019 fault.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The mission<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
\n

What of the new PM himself? It\u2019s not lost on the public, or his political critics, that he has been willing to junk old promises, and indeed, to junk old colleagues if need be. His backers say it\u2019s a sign of strength, and was a lesson he had to learn – ditching what one source described as \u201cnauseating\u201d pleas for party unity for a clearer priority, the desire to win.<\/p>\n

It is no easier now to get to the bottom of what Sir Keir believes in than it was when I first sat down with him. Back then he was pitching for the leadership of his party, when his aim to get them back into power looked fanciful.<\/p>\n

He and his team had come up with the phrase \u201cmoral socialism\u201d. Then, as now, it sounded like a slogan designed for a Guardian newspaper headline rather than something the public could latch on to. He told me he wanted to persuade people that Labour and politicians could be a \u201cforce for good and a force for change\u201c. That\u2019s a line that could feature in one of his many interviews or speeches four years later, where still, you might be searching for a grand ideological mantra.<\/p>\n

But perhaps to hunt for an ideology is to miss the point. He is not a factional politician who\u2019s been in the trade, man and boy, not a product of student union elections, decades of party conferences, fevered debates about the purity of particular policies.<\/p>\n

For his backers, that arguable absence of an ideology is his huge advantage. \u201cHe\u2019ll be the most normal PM we\u2019ve ever had,\u201d says one insider. One minister tells me he belongs not to any faction but to the party. \u201cHe is theirs,\u201d the new minister says. Whether Sir Keir can make the public feel that kind of direct connection with him as a leader seems ambitious and highly uncertain.<\/p>\n

He sometimes apes Tony Blair, saying he\u2019ll return politics to serve the people through what he terms national renewal. But despite the size of the majority, there is little sign at this moment that he could achieve that kind of incredible personal popularity the 1997 victor saw.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A second term?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
\n

It was Sir Keir\u2019s belief that the modern electorate could be incredibly volatile that led him to have faith that he could turn the 2019 disaster round.<\/p>\n

The willingness of so many voters to change their minds has been Keir Starmer\u2019s friend at this election but if that volatility is here to stay, it could become his foe.<\/p>\n

In time, and perhaps soon, Labour will start plotting privately how this term in office can be extended into what Starmer has already set out as his goal of a \u201cdecade of renewal\u201c. Just before polling day, one insider joked: \u201cI\u2019m never not thinking about winning the next election.\u201d<\/p>\n

By any traditional measure, a majority on this scale would see a prime minister securely locked into two terms of office. But in 2024 that feels less certain.<\/p>\n

For now for Labour, there is a moment of profound celebration. No more the impotence of opposition. No more the pain of losing yet again. No more \u201cface of thunder\u201d for the new prime minister, or the frustration of being irrelevant.<\/p>\n

As we saw in Downing Street yesterday, after all the waiting, he can allow himself a smile.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

BBC InDepth<\/i><\/a> is the new home on the website and app for the best analysis and expertise from our top journalists. Under a distinctive new brand, we\u2019ll bring you fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions, and deep reporting on the biggest issues to help you make sense of a complex world. And we\u2019ll be showcasing thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. We\u2019re starting small but thinking big, and we want to know what you think – you can send us your feedback by clicking on the button below.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n