Keir Starmer will hope that installing Morgan McSweeney as his new chief of staff – replacing Sue Gray – will end the factional infighting that has damaged the government’s first 100 days, and bring some welcome order to the Downing Street operation. But the prime minister is wrong if he thinks that shifting the personnel at the centre of government will be sufficient to solve his problems. Recent history is littered with false dawns where prime ministers and their staff have been unable to properly grip Downing Street because of the sheer dysfunction of the centre of government.
Labour have been clear that they see delivery as essential to being re-elected. That requires both projecting competence and delivering change on the issues voters care most about, including immigration and the state of public services. But the processes and structures at the centre make that far harder. Without a substantial overhaul, the existing set-up is an existential risk to any government hoping to win re-election.
The centre of government should be restructured
McSweeney’s appointment, with two deputies working for him, makes lines of accountability in No.10 clearer. But these appointments do little to fix the structural problems at the heart of government which have made it more difficult for successive administrations to get things done.
Perhaps surprisingly, No.10 does not have enough heft in Whitehall. In particular, it is unable to provide sufficient economic advice to the prime minister and, since the No.10 Data Science Unit (10DS) was moved out, it lacks analytical expertise (a weakness the Guardian has reported McSweeney has already identified). The Cabinet Office is an incoherent combination of secretariats, policy teams and the government’s corporate functions, like civil service HR. Too often, it works as a middleman which duplicates work and sows confusion.
Starmer and his close team need more firepower and there should be clearer responsibilities at the centre. The prime minister is the executive leader of the government and, for the government to deliver what it needs to, should be supported as such. Starmer should therefore task whoever is appointed as the new cabinet secretary to reshape the centre, and whether the candidates have a credible plan to do so should form part of the criteria for their appointment. Over time, the prime ministerially-focused parts of Cabinet Office should be merged with No.10 to create a powerful Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
The prime minister’s new top team needs to define the government’s purpose
Part of the reason Labour has drifted in its first 100 days is because Starmer and his team have not had a clear sense of the change they are trying to achieve. The five missions, while important, cover swathes of domestic policy and do not neatly provide a prism through which key decisions in government can be taken. Like many administrations before them, this Labour government has not set out a strategic vision at the start of its tenure, something more readily available in countries where publishing an early programme for government is the norm. This vision is different in form and function to a manifesto: it is not a list of policies but a statement of direction and priorities.
The time has now come to better define the government’s purpose. No.10’s new leadership team should commission an exercise which does so – more precisely defining the metrics which matter to the missions, and using that to produce both a set of core priorities for government and to make explicit the trade-offs the government is willing to make to achieve them.
This version of a programme for government would give the government a set of "north stars" it can use to communicate to Whitehall and the country what it is trying to achieve. It would also ensure that the government goes into the upcoming multi-year spending review with a clear policy agenda, which the Treasury can use to allocate spending-review settlements, rather than leaving a strategic vacuum which would mean settlements are allocated according to the Treasury’s own fiscal logic.
Starmer’s team should be better at communicating the government’s agenda
The lack of clarity over Labour’s policy agenda has made proactive communication with the public, to explain what the government is doing and how citizens will benefit, more difficult. But this problem has been exacerbated by a No.10 communications team which is still too much of a "press office", focused more on short-term firefighting than building longer term trust and confidence by explaining what the government stands for.
The appointment of James Lyons to head a strategic communications unit is an opportunity to reset the way the government communicates with the public. This team will work best if it has a better balance between new and traditional media platforms and is able to listen to the public to understand its concerns and priorities.
But Starmer’s operation also needs to be better at handling negative stories. The media debate often takes on outsized influence in SW1 – and dealing well with the press is not the same thing as communicating well with the public – but people still read newspapers and watch TV news. Both have been filled with stories that have damaged the government by portraying it as chaotic and ethically questionable. More effectively rebutting these sorts of stories, or at least finding sensible lines to take, is important to the government’s success. However that responsibility is now managed between Lyons and existing director of communications Matthew Doyle, Labour need it to be done better.
It quickly became clear that the centre of Keir Starmer’s government was not working and this reset is a chance to do things differently. The prime minister and his newly installed lieutenants must use the opportunity to fix long-standing problems with the centre. Only then will the British state be capable of delivering the change that Labour believes the public demand.
Jordan Urban is a senior researcher in the Institute for Government's civil service and policymaking team. This piece originally appeared on the IfG's website