If this is government, I’m a Pot Noodle

Those who once thought Sir Keir Starmer would be the miracle antidote to years of Tory misrule should not be too hard on themselves. Being prime minister is a tough job and it is often difficult to tell whether someone will be up to it until they are in post.

Apparent qualifications can be deceiving. Gordon Brown, with a decade at the Treasury under his belt, looked superficially well-equipped for Number 10 and yet was repeatedly floored by the demands of the role. Anthony Eden, who made his name handling international affairs, drowned in the Suez Canal crisis. Jim Callaghan, chosen as prime minister by Labour MPs in the belief that he knew how to contain the trade unions, was banjaxed by the Winter of Discontent. Theresa May, advertised as “strong and stable”, turned out to be as weak and wobbly as a three-legged table.

Sir Keir’s credentials looked more promising than many who had preceded him in Number 10. How often I heard Labour people commend him on the grounds that he looked “prime ministerial”. How often I even heard some Tories privately opine that the probity and seriousness he promised would be a blessed relief after the lurid psychodramas of their time in government. No one ever thought that inspirational speech-making was his strong suit, but almost everyone assumed he’d be technically competent. He’d presided over a complex organisation as director of public prosecutions, a more testing preparation for Number 10 than many prime ministers have had. On the way to Downing Street, he emphasised proper process, reliable judgment and sound decision-making.

All of which makes the subsequent disappointment more acute. It has long since become uncontentious to remark that Labour came to power without a proper plan for government. The casualty count of staff at Number 10 and the higher levels of the civil service has been as dizzying as it has been brutal. Either Sir Keir is lousy when it comes to selecting personnel or he’s a rotten manager of people. His reluctance to get a grip on what is happening inside his government helps to explain both last summer’s humiliating climbdown over welfare and the current impasse within Whitehall over defence spending. His role is to provide leadership, set a direction, arbitrate between ministers and test officials, not groan in self-pitying self-exculpation that he has been kept in the dark after something blows up.

The mounting anxieties about his capacity to be prime minister have come to a head over the Mandelson scandal. The mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, is being quite gentle when he describes this maelstrom of dreadful misjudgments and chaotic machinations as “an omnishambles”. His enemies haven’t made it stick when they charge the prime minister with lying, but he can’t swerve responsibility for the original sin: sending the Prince of Darkness to Washington in the first place. Sir Olly Robbins had his revenge for being sacked as head mandarin at the Foreign Office when he told the foreign affairs select committee that there was “an atmosphere of pressure” from Downing Street to rush Mandelson across the Atlantic and a “generally dismissive attitude” regarding his security vetting. That account is likely to be supported by Sir Philip Barton, Sir Olly’s predecessor, when he gives evidence this week. The committee will also have the chance to ask Morgan McSweeney, who quit as chief of staff at Number 10 over his role in the scandal, whether he told the Foreign Office to “just fucking approve” the appointment. With thousands of Mandelson-related documents still to be released, this saga has a long way to run. For the government, it is torture without respite.

In another exquisitely calculated bombshell detonated by Sir Olly, he said that Number 10 had asked him to find a diplomatic role for Matthew Doyle, a man with no diplomatic experience, to sweeten his departure as the director of communications. The civil servant said he was “under strict instruction” to keep this risible idea secret from the then foreign secretary, David Lammy. If this is professional government, I’m a Pot Noodle.

All of which is ghastly in and of itself. What amplifies the damage is that it makes government look even more remote from the everyday concerns of the public. Every minute that ministers spend squirming in front of microphones is a minute they are not talking about the cost of living and the state of public services, the topics that most interest the typical voter. “It’s so frustrating,” groans one despairing cabinet member.

What do we do with a problem like Sir Keir? The question is again bubbling furiously in the minds of Labour MPs as they head towards what all expect to be an evisceration in the May elections. “It is up to the cabinet now,” says one Labour veteran. “There comes a point where you have to put up or shut up, to use John Major’s phrase.”

One idea is gaining popularity in Labour circles. It is that Sir Keir should respond to the election results by putting an end date on his premiership. Pre-announcing his resignation would win favour with a lot of Labour MPs. It would spare them the grisly ordeal of trying to prise the prime minister out of Number 10 against his will. It would allow him to depart with some dignity and the pretence that it was at a time of his own choosing. It would create space for potential successors to lay out their ideas and gather support. Cheerleaders for Andy Burnham are especially keen on the idea of a slow-motion prime ministerial resignation because it would allow time for the mayor of Greater Manchester to try to get back to Westminster. Some commend the example of the nine-month handover from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown when Labour was last in government. It was dubbed a “smooth and orderly transition”, though my recollection is that it was not entirely either.

Truth be told, this “voluntary retirement” plan is more a symptom of the Labour party’s desperation than anything else. I’ve yet to see any evidence that Sir Keir, a stubborn and proud fellow who still thinks he’s the best man for the job, would go along with a scheme to pack him off into the sunset. The moment he declared he was leaving, he'd be rendered a lame-duck prime minister. To which objection, I hear some members of the cabinet retort: how exactly would that be different from what we are already enduring?

Photograph by Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street