Starmer's problem is not a lack of political nous. It's an absence of audacity

FDR and Clement Attlee drove big change by having a clear idea of what they wanted and the courage to do it. The UK desperately needs that kind of leadership.

Big problems require big solutions. Well-crafted policies are not enough. They need leaders with the self-confidence to pick up the ball and shoulder their way touchline whatever the obstacles. They need leaders with a big match temperament.

Does Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, have it in him? He knows the country that sent him to Downing Street with a super-majority is crying out for renewal. He says he knows that only transformative change will do the job. And yet he stumbles from one self-inflicted crisis to the next too-often picking fights with his own side.

We know he’s clever, diligent and hard-working. As Chief Prosecutor he was widely admired. Dominic Grieve, then Tory Attorney General, described him as ‘one of the most successful directors of recent years”. But he’s Prime Minister now. He’s not debating in a courtroom with a judge in a wig and a handful of spectators. He’s a gladiator in the Colosseum before a baying mob..

Does he have the unshakeable belief he needs to push through a sclerotic political system and entrenched vested interests? Does his reach - and his undoubted ambition - exceed his grasp? Is Starmer, to put it simply, big enough for the job?

Heaven knows Britain has big problems: a welfare state that’s unaffordable, crumbling infrastructure, growing threats in a volatile and unstable world, stagnant productivity, a staggering inequality of wealth and a Far Right rising on a tide of social unrest.

Nine years on from Brexit, Britain is a country seriously uncomfortable in its skin. Voters have been burned time and again by years of big, broken promises.

Nigel Farage is riding high in the polls on a recipe of xenophobia, wildly exaggerated promises and bullshit. And yet the same polls that predicted Starmer’s landslide win now foresee Reform UK with a Commons majority of 200 and Farage in Number 10.

Faithful Starmer supporters point to two things to back their claim that he has it in him to do what’s needed. The first is his leadership campaign and stunning election victory. With the help of Labour’s soft-spoken, steely Irish wizard, Morgan McSweeney, Starmer engineered what amounted to a stealthy coup against the Corbynistas.

He proceeded to make the Labour party, tainted by antisemitism, factional infighting and incompetence, electable within four years, winning the general election by a landslide in July 2024. It was a stunning achievement.

The second testament to his leadership qualities is how comfortable he seems on the world stage among seasoned leaders with far greater experience at the top. There’s talk of Starmer ‘putting the UK back on the world stage”.

You could add to that list that he’s good in a crisis. He comes over as calm and firm - whether that’s over Ukraine or the urban violence that followed the false claim that an asylum seeker had stabbed three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last July.

Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund’s excellent account of Starmer’s rise ‘ Get In’ paints a picture of a man hungry for power, eager to win it and exceptionally comfortable once he’s got it. The takeover was highly disciplined and planned to within an inch of its life.

But those are not the only qualities needed to bring about big changes. Starmer, according to the authors, likes to delegate. He’s a good manager. He appoints people and lets them get on with it. He is also, more troublingly, “not one to seek advice at moments of acute difficulty. Like a High Court judge he sat aloof, listening quietly to arguments that raged beneath him”.

His appointment of Sue Gray, the former senior civil servant, as Chief of Staff, proved disastrous. Controlling, reclusive and unbending, she shut people out. Voices that Starmer needed to listen to. Gray is the quintessential Whitehall mandarin: disciplined, thoughtful and honest. Maybe too much of a kindred spirit.

But a hands-off leader - especially at a time of crisis - only works if there’s a crystal clear vision of what the leader’s team is expected to achieve. A to-do list set out in ways that ministers, civil servants and crucially voters can understand.

We’re not talking about big egos, swagger and showmanship. Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are not the models. Of greater relevance are Franklin D. Roosevelt and Clement Attlee. Both inherited economies broken on the wheel of greed, profligacy and war. Yet both leaders managed to deliver because both were laser-focussed on simple, clearly articulated goals.

Starmer’s five ‘missions’ are a wish list not a strategy…more precisely a wishy-washy list. They put their finger on real and urgent problems: low growth, child poverty, skill shortages and so on. Granted these are immensely complex. But they’re merely the beginning of a process.

Take the row on proposed cuts to the welfare system proposed by Liz Kendall, the Works and Pensions Secretary, and the Chancellor Rachel Reeves. The government has dressed the proposed cuts up as a badly needed reform of the bloated welfare state.

The welfare bill this year stands at around £313 billion or 10% of total economic output. It’s projected to rise to £373 billion by 2029/30. True, this is less than half of, say, Sweden’s welfare bill. But Sweden has a higher tax burden and significantly lower pretensions to wield ( expensive) influence on the world stage.

Reform is needed. The system needs to encourage people to go back to work and be more self-reliant. No argument there. But we are where we are. The welfare state is part of Britian’s DNA. Pulling the rug from under the feet (or wheels) of disabled people with no clear explanation of why that’s needed and what a Starmer welfare state will look like at the end of the process, is a gross failure of imagination.

The handling of the winter fuel payments cuts was similarly baleful. Many people don’t need the hand-out. But many do. Yet the exercise was left to Rachel Reeves who presented it as a cost-saving exercise.

Was Starmer across this decision? Was he sitting across the table from Reeves when she pitched the policy? Did he interrogate her? Did his instincts as a social democrat kick in? He must have known it would cause a stink.

Starmer believes that in order to heal Britain what is needed is a mixture of fiscal discipline and compassion. This policy was perfectly suited to such an approach. McSweeney, the man behind the throne, is said to want an ‘insurgent’ government. There is little sign of that. It was an abysmal failure of imagination and communication.

Winning a leadership contest and governing in a way that lays the groundwork for a second term are two entirely different disciplines. Being Prime Minister is a crushing responsibility. You are swept off your feet by events and, mostly, other people’s demands.

Starmer has been accused of lacking political nous. There’s some truth to this. But a much more fundamental question arises as his poll ratings collapse: What does he believe in – beyond governing – and does he have the self-belief to push it through. Is his ambition tempered with courage?

Or, as Zorba the Greek tells the diffident Englishman Alan Bates in the movie of the same name: “ You think too much. That is your trouble. Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything”.

Except it isn’t funny. Starmer’s Labour may be the last chance to stop the slide and begin to restore some faith in the democratic process and start to fix Britain with the backing of the voters.