Sir Keir Starmer recently surprised some colleagues by telling them that he regards the time he has spent in parliament since he became a Labour MP as “the most futile nine years of my career”. That is one of his frequent expressions of frustration about being in opposition, even when leading it with a whopping advantage in the opinion polls. He expects it to be infinitely more fulfilling to be doing stuff as prime minister. The rest of the shadow cabinet likewise imagine that possessing power has to be a lot more satisfying than merely fighting for it.
I say imagine because very few of them have any first-hand knowledge of what it is like to lead a department, manage multibillion pound budgets, draft legislation and persuade parliament to pass it, plan and deliver programmes while fire-fighting crises that flare up out of nowhere and managing the expectations of stakeholders, the media and public opinion. “Many of Keir’s team don’t have any idea what will hit them,” remarks one veteran of past Labour governments.
Only a small minority of Sir Keir’s putative cabinet has been in one before. Those few who have previously sat around the top table did so more than a decade ago. This exclusive club is composed of Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband and that’s it. Peter Kyle, Bridget Phillipson and Wes Streeting are among those expecting to hold significant positions in a Labour cabinet who were not even MPs the last time their party wielded power.
Labour won’t want attention drawn to this lest some voters are put off by the idea of novice ministers wearing trainer wheels. But the Tories would be unwise to make an election issue of it, because pointing to Labour’s lack of ministerial experience is a reminder to the country of how very long the Conservatives have been occupying power. It’s nevertheless going to matter. So Labour’s personnel need to be thinking about how to do government not after the election, but before the weight of its pressures is on their shoulders. Being prepared for power gives a Starmer government a better chance of hitting the ground running rather than hitting the ground with its face.
One reason I say this is the whirlwind speed with which power changes hands in Britain. There isn’t a lengthy transition period as there is in the US when Americans elect a new president. In our system, the power switch takes place in less than 24 hours. On polling day, Sir Keir and his team will have responsibility for nothing. The following day, they will be responsible for everything. They will take office knackered after a month or more of campaigning and will have had little or no sleep the night before the arrival of the new prime minister at Number 10. A compelling study recently published by the Institute for Government, drawing on interviews with those who have had ringside seats at past transitions, concludes: “Oppositions that prepare are better at governing, particularly in the crucial early years of a parliament.”
That report urges Team Starmer to finalise a clear set of priorities well before polling day. Within weeks of being elected, the new PM will have to present a first king’s speech containing his government’s debut legislative programme. Shadow cabinet members think it will need to be a combination of “quick hits” to provide evidence that Britain is under new management as well as making a start on longer term aims to reform the economy, society and public services. When I spoke to Jonathan Powell, who became chief of staff at Number 10 when Tony Blair arrived there, he made this recommendation to Sir Keir and those who will accompany him into Downing Street: “You need a first hundred day plan and then a second hundred day plan. The trouble with first hundred day plans is that people are collapsing in exhaustion by the end of it so you have to have a second team ready to take over with the next plan.”
He counsels against being too cautious about getting going with strategic ambitions. “A mistake we made was not being radical enough early enough. Take the difficult steps early when you have lots of political capital in the hope of getting the return later on.”
That will require Number 10 setting a clear sense of direction, and purposeful ministers giving effective leadership to their civil servants to focus departments on the new government’s most critical goals. Some Labour frontbenchers who have excelled as opposition spokespeople will turn out to be flops when faced with the different demands of governing. Others who have not made much of a mark will prove to be more accomplished as ministers. Thrown into the deep end, some will swim, some will sink. To improve the chances of there being more doers than duds, former cabinet ministers and ex-permanent secretaries have been giving Labour frontbenchers private advice and coaching in how to be a successful minister.
Labour will have some advantages compared with 1997, the last time it moved from opposition into government. Tony Blair had run nothing except the Labour party before he became prime minister. Sir Keir’s time as head of the Crown Prosecution Service means he has experience of managing a complex state institution. In his early period at Number 10, Mr Blair used to complain to aides that he saw the civil service as “a big shiny Rolls-Royce that no one has taught me how to drive”. By appointing Sue Gray as his chief of staff, Sir Keir has placed at his right hand a Whitehall veteran who knows the machinery of government inside out.
Private discussions between senior Labour figures and civil servants – the “access talks” between the opposition and officials that routinely take place in the run up to an election – will begin shortly. Labour doesn’t much like talking about this in public, so acute is the paranoia of looking complacent and presumptuous. Says one shadow cabinet member: “We’re not going to get sucked into the idea that we’re already measuring the curtains.” Yet these meetings will be important in establishing the relationship between Labour and Whitehall.
When the governing party changes, there has historically often been tension between incoming ministers and officials. Margaret Thatcher arrived at Number 10 in 1979 wary of a civil service that she thought riddled with mandarins resistant to her intentions. “Is he one of us?” she would demand. Robin (now Lord) Butler, cabinet secretary when Labour took power in ’97 after 18 years of Tory rule, once told me that new ministers are often suspicious that civil servants harbour their own political agendas.
A person involved in the access talks from the Labour side says: “It’s mainly about building a rapport with the permanent secretaries. Them getting to know us and us getting to know them.” Team Starmer has reason to expect that it will receive a generally enthusiastic welcome from Whitehall. Not so much because it is stuffed with ideological sympathisers, but because Tories have used officials as whipping boys by denigrating the civil service as a useless “blob” while brutally purging many mandarins. One senior member of the shadow cabinet with good connections in Whitehall remarks: “They’re desperate for a change of government.”
One civil servant is a marked man. That is Simon Case, the Boris Johnson appointee as cabinet secretary who is widely regarded as too discredited to remain in post. Senior Labour people say that his days in the role are numbered. “If he has any sense, he will take himself off beforehand,” one shadow cabinet member has told me. That, though, would mean Rishi Sunak choosing the next cabinet secretary. Better then, say some influential Labour figures, for Mr Case to preside over the post-election handover and then be sent on his way.
Many who have experienced the transition from opposition to government tell me that the most dramatic change is a psychological one. As an opposition politician, all you can do is talk. Your metrics of success are friendly coverage in newspapers and how many minutes of airtime you can get on news programmes. The test of being a noteworthy minister is different. What most matters is not how many press releases you put out. What ultimately counts is whether you can get anything done.
Labour is so accustomed to losing that a lot of its people will struggle to think about anything except the election until polling day. Success in government is more likely for the shrewder Labour people who will also be focused on the intense challenges that will confront them from the day after.
• Andrew Rawnsley is the Chief Political Commentator of the Observer
