There are always arguments against having a reshuffle, chief among them a desire to project stability and avoid the impression of a panicked response to short-term difficulties. Sometimes, however, needs must. And this is certainly true now.
Sir Keir Starmer has been in No 10 for more than a year; he swept to office on the back of a big majority and broad public goodwill. With his ratings plummeting and Reform UK riding high, a lot of that early political capital has gone. And while some of the blame attaches to events beyond his control, much of the rest can be traced to a sense of dysfunction and drift at Downing Street, so it is quite right that he has begun there, according to the The Independent.
At the top of the list had to be strengthening the economic policy side and drastically improving the government’s messaging. The appointment of Darren Jones, the well-regarded chief secretary to the Treasury, the replacement of his principal private secretary, Nin Pandit, with Dan York-Smith, from the Treasury, and the recruitment as economic adviser of Minouche Shafik, formerly of the Bank of England, the IMF and a host of other institutions, would seem to add considerably to No 10’s economic firepower – although the risk of openly divergent thinking at No 10 and No 11 will have to be avoided.
Of more concern, perhaps, is that selecting people and steering the government machine have not featured among the prime minister’s obvious strengths over his first year in office.
Key appointments, starting with that of Sue Gray as his chief of staff to oversee the transition into government, turned out badly. It is reported that he is suffering buyer’s remorse over his choice — after a long selection process — of Sir Chris Wormald as cabinet secretary and head of the civil service.
The new communications team is not yet complete, but will follow a succession of changes over the past year and a record of often mixed, or even no, messaging — disastrously so over this summer, where Nigel Farage and Reform were allowed to dominate the field on small boats and asylum hotels, largely unchallenged. Communications are all the more important when, as now, the prime minister is not a natural communicator himself.
The immediate priority for Sir Keir and his new team, along with trying to wrest back the initiative from Reform on migration, will be getting both the substance and the “sell” right on their economic priorities ahead of Rachel Reeves’s second Budget. This is crucial, because the public, smarting from continuing rises in the cost of living — specifically in the food and energy sectors — have been left with little idea of where the government is going here.
Before Reeves’s first Budget, the messages had two main themes: not scaring the horses of big business, and the pursuit of growth, including through accelerated housebuilding, to fuel higher living standards. These themes have almost vanished. In fact, some of Reeves’s headline measures from that Budget — on curbing tax privileges for non-doms and raising employers’ national insurance contributions — appear to have had the reverse of the desired effect, even if the exodus of the wealthy may be smaller than some had forecast.
Above-inflation pay rises for some public sector workers, including resident doctors, have had the entirely predictable effect of fuelling the appetite for more. Meanwhile, a relatively unambitious effort to curb benefits and encourage more people into work was thwarted by an internal party revolt.
What is more, certain well-rehearsed messages will no longer work. It was all very well to blame past Conservative governments in the first months, but that much-vaunted £22bn “black hole” has now swollen to more than £50bn — all on this government’s watch. Starmer and Reeves now have less than two months between them to devise (and prepare public opinion for) a Budget that is bound to entail tax rises.
So far, the messaging, such as it has been, has left a lot to be desired. Disparate kite-flying about changes to property and other taxes has had the effect of almost paralysing the housing market and discouraging consumers from spending on other things. There can be arguments for and against falling house prices, but for the market simply to be stuck for months in anticipation of new levies that may or may not happen only undermines confidence more widely.
