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Prime Minister Starmer traveled to north Wales this past Thursday to declare the development of a fresh nuclear energy facility. This represents a significant policy event with implications at local and countrywide levels. Yet, the PM did not devote extensive time in Wales to advocating solutions for the UK's power requirements. Rather, he spent it trying to put an end to the briefing controversy within Labour's leadership, telling journalists that Downing Street had not undermined the health secretary's goals in recent days.

Therefore, Sir Keir’s day acted as a microcosm of what his premiership has evolved into overall. Firstly, he wants his administration to be performing, and to be seen to be doing, important things. Conversely, he is unable to achieve this because of the manner he – and, to an extent, the nation as a whole – now conducts political and governmental affairs.

Sir Keir is unable to change the political culture single-handedly, but he can take action about his own role in it. The plain fact is that he could run the government's core far better than he does. If he did this, he could discover that the nation was in less despair about his government than it is, and that he was getting his messages across more successfully.

Staffing Issues in Downing Street

A number of the issues in Number 10 are about individuals. The personal dynamics of every Downing Street operation are hard to know accurately from the exterior. Yet it appears clear that Sir Keir fails to make good personnel choices, or stick with them. Perhaps he is too busy. Perhaps he is not really interested. But he needs to improve his performance, not do things slowly or by halves.

• He hesitated about giving the key job of top civil servant to Chris Wormald.
• He made a former official his top aide, then substituted her with a political strategist.
• He recruited Darren Jones in from the finance ministry as his deputy.
• His communications chiefs have chopped and changed.
• Advisors on politics and policy have come and gone.
• It is a mess.

Systemic Issues at the Heart of Government

Every prime minister devote excessive time overseas and on foreign affairs, areas where Sir Keir ought to assign more tasks, and too little conversing with parliamentarians and listening to the public. Prime ministers also spend too much time engaging with the press, which Sir Keir worsens by doing it poorly. Yet leaders cannot claim to be surprised when their political appointees, who are often party activists or politically ambitious, overstep boundaries or become the story, as Mr McSweeney now has.

The biggest issues, though, are structural. It would be good to believe that Sir Keir read the Institute for Government’s spring 2024 report on reforming the government's central operations. His inability to grip these issues in the summer or afterward implies he did not. The often abject performance of the Labour administration indicates recommendations like reorganizing the functions of the central government office and Downing Street, and dividing the positions of top official and head of the civil service, are now urgent.

The political pre-eminence of PMs greatly exceeds the support available to them. Consequently, everything currently suffers, and many tasks are poorly executed or ignored.

This is not Sir Keir’s sole responsibility. He stands as the casualty of previous shortcomings as well as the author of current mistakes. Yet individuals who expected Sir Keir might get a grip on the centre and take the machinery of government seriously have been let down. Sadly, the primary casualty from this failure is Sir Keir personally.