The resignation of Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, on Sunday brings the Starmer era in British politics to an end. The precise timing and mechanism of the prime minister’s defenestration is unclear. But his authority is shot to pieces and his government has lost what purpose it had.
There is only one subject on the Labour Party’s mind: Who should replace him? The pros and cons of the two main candidates are endlessly debated. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is a deft media performer. But is that a strength rather than a weakness in the post-Peter Mandelson era, with the party’s former spinmeister now in disgrace? Angela Rayner, the ex-deputy leader, is a charismatic champion of the left. But what about her tax affairs? Al Carns, the armed-services minister and former special-services officer, has made a well-publicized visit to NATO’s northernmost border on Norway’s Russia border. At least this relative unknown is free of political baggage.
But Labour needs more than a new leader. It needs a new sense of direction. The problem with Starmer’s leadership is not simply that he isn’t very good at politics. It is that he has never known what he wanted to do with power. He occasionally flirted with silly ideas — “mission-driven government” one day and reviving the spirit of Harold Wilson the next — only to abandon them. He never had an answer to the basic question: What am I here for?
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