Accusations that Starmer is an HR manager squatting in No 10 are bound to wound

A fascinating new book, published next week, telling the inside story of Keir Starmer’s leadership, paints an unflattering portrait of the prime minister.

- ANDREW GRICE

It claims Morgan McSweeney, now the Downing Street chief of staff, suggested Starmer behaved “like an HR manager, not a leader”, while another senior adviser said Starmer wrongly thought he was “driving the train” because his aides had sat him at the front of a driverless one.

For Starmer, such revelations are wounding. They would matter less if Labour had not had such a wobbly start in government.

Some of the damning quotes are out of date, from the period before Starmer’s 2021 nadir and his decision to go for broke. They probably elevate the power of advisers above their real status. Indeed, some Labour figures jokingly describe Get In, by the well-connected Times journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, as “a biography of Morgan McSweeney”.

Their book shines a light on the relationship between leading politicians and their influential advisers. Although Margaret Thatcher was technically correct in saying “advisers advise, ministers decide”, some senior aides get above themselves – notably Dominic Cummings who, just weeks after helping Boris Johnson win the 2019 election to get Brexit done, discussed replacing him as PM.

Although McSweeney was the architect of last year’s remarkable election victory, I don't think he has overreached in the way Cummings did. Perhaps McSweeney allies were overzealous in briefing the book’s authors about his undoubted abilities and in doing so, inadvertently portrayed him as a puppet master. That is demeaning for the “puppet” – Starmer.