Keir Starmer’s promise to deliver now rings hollow

If nothing else, Sir Keir Starmer is a stolid fellow, rarely betraying a political vulnerability in his own countenance. Reportedly, he sleeps well and is comfortable in the job. If the prospect of a succession of political beatings over the coming months disturbs him, he is showing no signs of it.

There may be more strikes in the public sector, inflation seems set to remain stubbornly high, unemployment is creeping up, welfare reform is as distant as ever, the asylum hotels are full, and economic growth, the supposed defining mission of his administration, will be minimal. The round of elections in local authorities, the Scottish parliament and the Senedd look set to be humiliating, according to The Independent.

DonaldTrump and the European Commission could make life even less comfortable for him. Plus, the Tories are showing signs of life, the Greens are tormenting him and Reform UK, though its poll numbers are sagging, is not going to take its snake oil cart away. Publicly, at least, he seems unfazed by the outlook. Even so, some 18 months into his premiership and with his negative personal ratings breaking all kinds of historical records, even this most stoic of prime ministers must be wondering what he can do to lift his government and his party out of its unprecedented unpopularity. Helpfully or not, he is not short of advice.

The latest counsel comes from two former advisers close to Labour, and another who is anything but. Sir Chris Powell, a man who has been associated with marketing Labour for three decades, rightly points out that the stakes are unusually high. The next general election will not be the usual swing of the pendulum but will represent an “existential threat” to democracy itself, such is the nature and purpose of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

A more recent colleague, Paul Ovenden, his former director of political strategy, forced to resign last September over offensive comments concerning Diane Abbott, complains that the government is too easily distracted by relatively minor issues such as the Abd el-Fattah case. For what it’s worth, Dominic Cummings has chimed in, again, that Whitehall, and particularly the Cabinet Office, needs to be destroyed and rebuilt, and the power of the legal establishment dispatched along with it.

Sir Keir knows all this. Although derided (sometimes by his own team) as more of an HR manager or a lawyer than a leader, and an almost accidental prime minister, he is a sufficiently good politician to realise the gravity of the situation and the constraints he is pushing against. Like Cummings, the prime minister has also said he is frustrated with the machinery of government: “Every time I go to pull a lever there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arm’s-length bodies that mean that the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be.”

When Mr Ovenden suggests that the government ought to roll back environmental regulations, cut welfare spending and even end the triple-lock on pensions, these are things that Sir Keir has either done, to some extent, tried to do, or is no doubt contemplating. Sir Chris wants a reset — well, it has to be said, Sir Keir has tried plenty of those.

The trouble with most advisers, and former advisers, even the wisest, is that their solutions, when not obvious, are often amorphous, intellectual affairs — not always practical or particularly popular.

They are not the kind of thing Sir Keir naturally warms to. When he has tried, it has failed to galvanise the state, motivate his party or inspire the public. He probably wasn’t that convinced himself. His own MPs have forced him into a “soft left” stance he would once have found intolerable, but which he now has to make the best of – symbolised by U-turns on social security and epitomised in the last Budget, an unashamedly “tax and spend” affair.