Keir Starmer’s critics have often complained that he doesn’t have a grip on the government machine. He pulls levers, and they move; but nothing else does. The whirligig of appointments and firings around Downing Street over the past year have suggested that he rather agrees and feels frustrated.
To that extent, the new parliamentary term began with business-as-usual in Starmer-land. After just a year, James Lyons, the director of communications, has left. He’d already told colleagues he only planned to spend 12 months there and has been working on strategic changes – in effect, fewer old-fashioned press officers, more data scientists, graphics designers and online content providers. He was loved by some parts of Whitehall, loathed by others.
Every recent prime minister has had a larger-than-life spokesperson, to inform, rebuke and provoke journalists… an Alastair Campbell, Malcolm Tucker or Guto Harri. Keir Starmer has no such person. Tim Allan, who worked in No 10 with Tony Blair, and went on to found Portland Communications, joins the team but not really in that role. David Dinsmore, the former chief operating officer of Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, and a previous Sun editor, joins as a civil servant to oversee communication strategy more generally. In all of this we see the continuing influence of the Blair years and, perhaps, rather too many cooks.
On policy, again, with a move for Starmer’s long-time adviser Stuart Ingham, there seems a gap in the policy team. Minouche Shafik, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, comes in as Starmer’s economic adviser – the lack of a bridge to the Treasury has been a big problem for No 10, perhaps now resolved.
But the most intriguing change is the creation of an entirely new job, chief secretary to the prime minister, for the former number two at the Treasury, Darren Jones MP. Starmer feels that he doesn’t have enough reach into much of Whitehall actually to pursue policies and speed them up – that will be Jones’s job now, as well as being the political link to the Parliamentary Labour Party, which was something clearly lacking at the time of the welfare revolt in the spring.
Jones, as the former chief secretary to the Treasury, understands the spending pressures across Whitehall better than almost anybody else – whether he will be entirely welcomed by all departments is unclear. But for the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to lose her lieutenant just as a ferociously difficult run-up to the next Budget begins, must be a little unsettling for her.
None of this will be noticed by the general public. If it gives the Prime Minister a stronger sense that he is properly in charge, and therefore gives the government more edge, more cut-through, it will be as important as a ministerial reshuffle. Let’s hope so. For the time being, the price of fish remains resolutely unchanged.
[See also: Will Keir Starmer’s shake-up in No 10 make a difference?]
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