How Starmer has changed his strategy against Reform

After the disastrous end to his first year in power, the Labour leader is under pressure. But he won't get back in the game by pretending to be someone he is not

- Andrew Grice

In the battle for “Keir’s ear” before last year’s election, there was one unlikely whisperer. Apparently, over a secret dinner, Michael Gove, then a member of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet, advised Morgan McSweeney, then Keir Starmer’s campaign director, about “overcoming vested interests and resistance to change within Whitehall”.

The story is in Tom Baldwin’s updated biography of Starmer, to be published on 31 July.

Gove reportedly found McSweeney “very open, interesting, smart and understated but also capable of expressing his opinion with clarity and force when necessary”, and believed that Starmer had made a mistake by playing the former senior civil servant Sue Gray “in the wrong position” as his chief of staff. Starmer now admits she was “not the right person for the job”.

Gove’s role will raise Conservative eyebrows. He was accused of betraying David Cameron by backing Brexit, and Boris Johnson over his 2016 Tory leadership bid. Unusually, Gove has always enjoyed a gossip with people in other parties, which shouldn’t be seen as a crime.

Today, as editor of The Spectator and a Tory peer, Gove is an admirer of McSweeney, now the Downing Street chief of staff, labelling him “the insurgent” in one cover story. But he has been critical of Starmer on crime, education, social justice, the environment, EU relations, and for not sticking to McSweeney’s “insurgent” mantra, claiming that the Whitehall establishment has “taken back control”.