LEO MCKINSTRY: I've been a die-hard Right-winger for decades but even I'm reassured by Labour's promising first week after years of Tory chaos and division
When Sir Keir Starmer entered No 10 for the first time last Friday, stormy clouds hung over central London.
The grim weather matched the mood of many Conservative voters, who – as a self-confessed 'socialist' took the reins of power – viewed the future with dread.
The elements even appeared to offer a commentary on the relative political gifts of Starmer and the last Labour leader to win a landslide majority.
When the charismatic Tony Blair emerged victorious in 1997, there was not a cloud in the sky. He revelled in the applause of supporters lining Downing Street in glorious sunshine and the national mood was as bright as the blue sky above.
But with the robotic and dull Starmer at the helm, for days the weather remained as bleak as it had been on day one of his premiership.
Sir Keir Starmer entered No 10 for the first time last Friday as Prime Minister after a landslide victory against the Conservative Party
The Prime Minister speaks to journalists as he travels to Washington DC to attend a Nato summit earlier this week
Then something remarkable happened. A man who had been written off as too serious to connect easily with the public and too wooden to be a persuasive communicator, loosened up.
Buttressed by Labour's colossal majority, he visibly relaxed into his new role. Having been operating under tremendous tension for months as he sought to protect Labour's huge but fragile poll lead – a task likened to carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor – he gradually came into his own.
Even the most partisan Tory would have to admit that Starmer has made a successful start.
He showed a previously well- concealed human side to his character when he was seen to put a consoling hand on former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's shoulder as the two men left the Commons chamber earlier this week.
And he was almost immediately given the opportunity to assert his role as one of the leaders of the free world when he flew to Washington DC to attend Nato's 75th anniversary summit.
Accompanied by his photogenic wife Victoria, he cut an impressive figure as he greeted the likes of U.S. President Joe Biden, Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron.
And one striking vignette revealed how he is not as colourless as his image suggests. Unfortunately for Starmer, unlike many politicians he is a genuine football fan, one session of the summit coincided with England's epic win in the Euros semi-final against the Netherlands in Dortmund.
Keen to catch some of the live action, he was directed to a television room, where he watched part of the first half in the company of the Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof.
In one scene, captured on camera, he leapt out of his chair and punched the air with delight when the England skipper Harry Kane equalised from the penalty spot. Then, slightly embarrassed at this display of exuberance in front of his Dutch counterpart, he sat down sheepishly.
But he had no reason to feel awkward. His behaviour, patriotic, engaged and spontaneous, can only have improved his standing with the British public.
The incident also gave the embattled Biden a rare opportunity to indulge in a bit of banter when he met Starmer for the first time. 'Still talking to the Dutch PM?' he joked as he shook Starmer's hand.
Sir Keir with deputy prime minister Angela Rayner as he hosts his first cabinet meeting at No 10 last Saturday
England's historic victory provided an uplifting backdrop to this transatlantic trip.
The cheers of the crowds and television viewers at the country's march into the final have been matched by a tentative sense that Britain may be embarking on a new chapter.
In Labour circles, there is naturally widespread relief that what they see as the chaos and division of successive Tory administrations has been replace by Starmer's stolid respectability.
But even centrist voters and some centre-right ones acknowledge that the new PM has made a good start.
Jim Callaghan, who succeeded Harold Wilson as Prime Minister in 1976, becoming the only politician ever to hold all four great offices of state, once said with refreshing candour: 'I had no doubts at all about my capacity to be Prime Minister. I had seen how the job was conducted by Harold Wilson and Clement Attlee. I had been a senior Minister. I took it with complete confidence.'
Starmer has only been in post for little more than a week but he already exudes the same self-belief. There is no perception of him being paralysed by the burdens of the job, as happened with Theresa May, or being temperamentally unsuited for the position, like the neurotic Gordon Brown or the apparent reckless Liz Truss.
At the Washington Nato summit, he looked confident and at ease on the global stage, his crushing election win giving him credibility and arousing envy among other world leaders.
Starmer also has a powerful work ethic, a deep sense of public service and a gift for energising other people to back his causes.
It is true that he has less Parliamentary experience than nearly all of his 57 predecessors in Downing Street, having been first elected just nine years ago in 2015. Churchill, for example, served more than 40 years as an MP before he became Prime Minister and the 19th century titan William Gladstone had 36 years behind him when he finally made it to the top of the greasy pole.
On the other hand, unlike most of Britain's political leaders past and present, Starmer has experience of running a major organisation. As the Director of Public Prosecutions, he was in charge of more than 5,000 people in the Crown Prosecution Service, earning not only a knighthood but also a reputation for being highly competent, diligent, well-briefed and purposeful.
I must confess that I am surprised by my own initially positive reaction to the new Starmer government, having spent the past 30 years attacking Labour.
Sir Keir met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky during a bilateral meeting at a hotel in Washington DC on Wednesday
The Prime Minister also met US President Joe Biden during the 2024 Nato summit earlier this week
My deep hostility was informed by the decade I spent from 1985 as a Labour activist, Islington councillor and Parliamentary aide.
During that time I became profoundly disillusioned with the party and its dogma, particularly the North London brand of socialism, which meshed chronic profligacy with public money, skyrocketing taxation, continual bureaucratic empire-building, an obsession with toxic identity politics, a deep suspicion of British nationhood, a culture of invented grievance and victimhood in the workforce and surrender to the trade unions.
Since 1992, I have never voted Labour and I did not intend to start doing so again with Sir Keir, particularly given his intellectual gymnastics over the definition of womanhood and his shameful attempts in the 2017 Parliament to overturn the democratic result of the Brexit referendum.
Yet I cannot deny that he and his Cabinet colleagues have, so far, defied many of my darkest forebodings. To date, they have been far more moderate and less doctrinaire than I expected.
The tone was set by Starmer himself in his first address to the nation in front of No.10's famous black door, when he said that he wanted to bring 'an end to the era of noisy performance, tread more lightly on your lives and unite our country', sentiments with which no mainstream conservative could disagree.
He added, in a refreshing commitment to be non-partisan: 'Whether you voted Labour or not – especially if you did not – my Government will serve you.'
The same restrained, altruistic spirit was on display as he welcomed his ministers to their first Cabinet meeting last Saturday. 'The work of change begins immediately,' he said, as he promised a 'new era of stability and moderation'.
In some respects, Sir Keir is a strangely unpolitical figure, despite the fact that his parents named him after Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour party and its first leader. He belongs to no faction in the Labour party, nor is he drawn to debates about political philosophy.
Herbert Morrison, the dynamic post-war Minister who shared Starmer's antipathy to academic theorising, famously said that 'socialism is what a Labour Government does'.
Today, Starmer says he is interested in practical solutions to problems rather than the triumph of the revolution. That attitude is reflected in his closeness to his chief aide, the Irishman Morgan McSweeney, a long-serving Labour operator who has been vital to his rise to the top.
Sir Keir greets Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni at the Nato summit yesterday
He and his wife Imogen Walker, an actress now a Labour MP, are one of the party's power couples and McSweeney is regarded with a degree of awe because of his reputation for ruthless efficiency, which was highlighted in both his successful strategy to kick former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn out of the party and his determination to wrest control of Lambeth Council from the ultra-Left.
The Labour historian and former Dagenham MP Jon Cruddas says of McSweeney: 'He has the psychology of an organiser and is quite brilliant at it. Those fundamental political skills have been chiselled out over the years.'
Starmer's indifference to group allegiances also shines through other aspects of his personnel and policies. His government includes several talented outsiders who have been hired not because of their political loyalty but because of their expertise.
So Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government's Chief Scientific Officer during the Covid pandemic, has become the Science Minister, while the new Prisons Minister is businessman James Timpson, whose well-known key cutting and shoe repair company employs large numbers of former convicts.
Further practicality can be found in the recruitment of globally renowned surgeon Professor Lord (Ara) Darzi to head an independent review into the performance of the NHS, which is likely to focus on improvements to the quality of care.
But an even more important appointment is that of 76-year-old Paul Corrigan, a bravely unorthodox policy analyst as adviser to the new Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
Corrigan, who has no time for the 'begging bowl' mentality of the NHS, is full of insights into the chronic waste, over-staffing, low productivity and misguided priorities of the current service, pointing out that overall NHS spending has increased by almost 40 per cent in real terms since 2010 yet the NHS produces some of the worst standards of healthcare in Europe.
If Streeting, backed by Corrigan, is truly going to reform the NHS, he will have to smash the malignant influence of the British Medical Association, which has become so irresponsibly militant that it increasingly looks like a healthcare version of Arthur Scargill's National Union of Miners back in the early 1980s.
The same toughness will be needed by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall as she embarks on the reform of the bloated welfare system, which currently provides perverse incentives to joblessness, family breakdown and benefits dependency.
With the Tories retreating for the summer recess, Labour now dominates the political landscape. Perhaps Sir Keir and his Cabinet should savour this moment – because the honeymoon could be short.
Ministers will need all their reserves of strength as the harsh realities of governance become apparent. Already the prisons are facing an apparent overcrowding crisis and yesterday's announcement from Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood emphasises early release measures planned.
The numbers of migrants and benefit claimants will continue to rise. So will debts, strikes and demands for increased spending.
The decline in the quality of public services will accelerate without comprehensive and politically difficult reform, as the Blob imposes yet more diversity targets, equality monitoring exercises and 'race audits'.
Sir Keir's fixation with organisational tinkering – which he shares with his Chief of Staff Sue Gray, herself a former 'impartial' civil servant, will lead to a vast extension of officialdom throughout the civic realm.
There will be a plethora of new bodies, quangos and agencies – like Border Security Command, Skills England, a new water regulator and an 'Industrial Strategy Council' – which will give the temporary illusion of progress but only succeed in putting up costs.
The pressure for tax rises will also become irresistible, starting with capital gains and inheritance levies, but soon moving on to pensions raids. Every Labour Government in history has stumbled into a major financial crisis. Will Starmer's be any different?
Perhaps not. Yet, with their thorough preparations and deliberately low-key expectations, they are giving themselves a chance of avoiding such a fate.
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