How the Civil Service was the ruin of Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer entered office as a serious man for serious times, earnestly promising “the return of politics to public service”. He’ll leave it as a figure of derision among his party and the country — the most unpopular Prime Minister on record. 

Much ink has been spilled analysing the root of Starmer’s failings. The consensus is clear: he was too willing to outsource decision making to others. Even his own staff described him as the driver of a Docklands Light Railway train. 

He left the politics to Morgan McSweeney, the preparation for government to Sue Gray, the economics to Rachel Reeves. He delivered speeches he hadn’t bothered to read.

All of this is true. But it was Starmer’s willingness to delegate to another group — the Civil Service — that was responsible for the disastrous start his government never recovered from. 

Starmer and his ministers acquiesced to the supposed experts they believed had been unfairly demonised as an obstructionist “blob”

Cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance, imposing a death tax on family farms, paying to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, and banning smoking in pub gardens all had something in common. They were ideas politically naive officials had tried and failed to get past the Tories. 

Clouded by a belief that their predecessors had been uniquely incompetent, Starmer and his ministers acquiesced to the supposed experts they believed had been unfairly demonised as an obstructionist “blob”. 

I saw for myself how Health officials drowned inexperienced Ministers in a deluge of interventionist policy proposals. What else could explain then Public Health Minister, Andrew Gwynne, suggesting limiting pub opening hours? His leader’s favourite photocall was clutching a pint at his local for crying out loud.

The evidence on banning smoking outdoors was also comically thin. It relied on the logic that inhaling any kind of smoke was “harmful” and should be stopped no matter the impact on businesses. At a huge economic and political cost, it would have had next to no impact on public health. 

Yet, Wes Streeting admitted that had it not been for a leak, the policy would have gone to a consultation. To translate the Whitehall speak, that means a ban would have been introduced.

Similarly, cutting winter fuel and introducing the family farms tax would have barely registered on the government’s balance sheet. An attempt to raise the pitiful sum of around £2bn, defined Starmer’s government as cruel and uncaring and turned his previously supplicant backbenchers against him. The stage was set for the welfare rebellion that paralysed the rest of his premiership. 

Of course, a more astute leader would have retreated from these positions sooner. It took David Cameron five days to drop his much maligned cuts to PIP. Today, they’re rarely talked about.

Starmer, on the other hand, waited ten months and a set of disastrous local election results to reverse ferret on winter fuel. A climbdown on the family farms tax came after the rural community descended on central London not once, but three times. 

Rightly, he has carried the can for his own indecision and pig-headedness. But the question remains, why could none of the thousands of officials paid to advise Starmer not see what the rest of the country could? Did they not put the telly on, read the newspaper, take a look at the polling and conclude that these policies were about as popular as Nick Clegg at a student union bar? 

Political impartiality does not have to mean political ignorance. A senior official, say the Cabinet Secretary, should have sidled up to the boss and told him they’d got it wrong, that these policies weren’t working, that they’d have to change course.

Perhaps I am being unfair. Maybe these conversations did take place — although, in the Whitehall I knew, I find that hard to imagine. Faced with the realisation he has made a cock-up, the bureaucrats’ first instinct is not to hold his hand up, it is to dig in, obfuscate and shift attention elsewhere. 

To bend the system to their will, Ministers need acute bullshit detectors and the courage of their convictions. Starmer and his team possessed neither.

After five months in office, the Prime Minister expressed a wish to “re-wire” Whitehall. But the die had already been cast. Relying on the Civil Service to do this thinking had left Starmer terminally politically wounded. 

Winter fuel became so toxic that even at this May’s local elections, almost a year after Starmer’s u-turn, voters still cited the policy as their motivation for giving Labour a kicking. A Prime Minister who loves a football metaphor, scored one of the biggest own goals in British political history.

As creatures of London,  his team failed to grasp the extent to which rural communities would rally round the farmers they relied on to tackle flooding, clear roads and get to work in the morning. Feeling let down by the Tories, many reluctantly backed Labour in 2024. They won’t make the same mistake again. Starmer’s has handed rural Britain to Nigel Farage on a plate.

The hospitality industry was also cautiously optimistic about a Labour government. But the suggestion of an outdoor smoking ban hardened their suspicions that Starmer was anti-business. Five years after his support for covid lockdowns got him thrown out of a Bath pub, Starmer’s MPs are barred from watering holes across the country and the hospitality industry is busy campaigning to make Andy Burnham Prime Minister.

As much as he is ridiculed as an opportunist turncoat, it’s hard to imagine that Burnham would have made the same mistakes. Career politicians might not be great reformers of the system, but at least they know how to navigate it. 

In less than a month, the King of the North could have the keys to the kingdom. If he wants to avoid Starmer’s fate, he needs to do what his predecessor never managed to do: make a plan, force it on the machine, and always put politics first.

Officials may not thank him for taking this approach. But if Burnham fails, and Reform takes office, they’ll soon see what real hostility looks like.