Prime minister’s questions: a shouty, jeery, very occasionally useful advert for British politics. Here’s what you need to know from the latest session in POLITICO’s weekly run-through. What they sparred about: The economy, stupid. In their first joust since the summer recess, Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch went toe-to-toe with Prime Minister Keir Starmer ahead of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ second budget, now confirmed for Nov. 26. But it was a matter closer to home that caused the PM discomfort. Home truths: Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner admitted Wednesday she inadvertently did not pay enough stamp duty on her second home and referred herself to the standards watchdog. It was an open goal for Badenoch. She tried to strike, asking “why she is still in office?” but didn’t end her first question there, choosing to ask about government borrowing stats. House in order: The PM gave an answer reminiscent of Boris Johnson’s comments during the Partygate scandal, insisting Rayner had gone “over and above” and “explained her personal circumstances in detail,” knowing “just how difficult” it was to refer herself to the independent adviser on the ministerial code. Bricking it: Badenoch, unsurprisingly, wasn’t satisfied, suggesting that the PM wouldn’t have “all that sympathy if it was a Conservative deputy prime minister” and that if Starmer had “backbone, he would sack her.” The PM happily distinguished between now and the Tory era, arguing there “wouldn’t have been the accountability that there now is in place because they spent years and years avoiding it.” Inspiring stuff, guys. To be clear: The revelation from Rayner, just 30 minutes before PMQs started, was embarrassing for the PM — only fueling the charge from parties like Reform UK that the Tories and Labour are one and same. But Badenoch’s decision not to junk her previous questions and devote all six to Rayner’s predicament raised more than a few eyebrows. Back to the economy: There was the usual back and forth over who managed the public finances more disastrously. Badenoch said the Tories left Starmer the “fastest growing economy,” an assertion the PM said was “about as credible as her place at Stanford University, frankly” after the Guardian raised doubt as to whether she was ever offered a place at the school. Tick tock: Badenoch reasonably asked about why the budget was so late in the fall, claiming it was “clear that taxes are going up for everyone, except perhaps the deputy prime minister.” Starmer insisted Labour were just going through the “due process” for a budget, unlike the Tories who “blew up the economy.” The originality here is next level. Barraging the Farage: Starmer had a pop at perhaps the real opposition leader in British politics, Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, who skipped PMQs to give evidence to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee about free speech in Europe. The PM accused Farage of lobbying Americans to “impose sanctions on this country to harm working people” and you “cannot get more unpatriotic than that.” Tell us what you really think, Keir! Helpful backbench intervention of the week: Birmingham Erdington MP Paulette Hamilton praised Labour West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker for supporting local businesses and asked Starmer to confirm his government would do the same. In a groundbreaking move, Starmer did just that. What a news line! Totally unscientific scores on the doors: Starmer 6/10. Badenoch 4/10. The first PMQs of the fall couldn’t have been worse timed for the PM, after his second in command admitted a serious tax error. But it was a blunder Badenoch failed to capitalize on, largely sticking to prepared questions on the economy. While Starmer’s responses won’t have appeased his strongest critics, the PM’s holding responses allowed him to escape largely unscathed.

LONDON — Fresh from another pasting at the ballot box, Britain’s Conservatives are searching for a comeback plan. After being booted out of national office in July, a spate of local election defeats last week has left them licking their wounds — and wondering if the success of Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK renders them irrelevant. The results are a world away from when the seats were last fought in 2021 under Boris Johnson — the controversial Eurosceptic who helped the Tories bounce back from a Farage surge last time around, before blowing himself up in office. Back then, Johnson was master of all he surveyed: an 80-seat Commons majority, a “vaccine bounce” from the fast deployment of Covid-19 jabs and a Labour opposition at that point failing to prove it was electable. Four years on, that bubble has well and truly burst — and some Tories are now pining if not for Johnson himself, then at least for a rekindling of the flame he lit under the Tories. “These results are sobering,” said one Tory MP, granted anonymity like others quoted in this article to speak candidly. “The coalition we built in 2019 was powerful because it tapped into a sense of national renewal and pride. That energy hasn’t disappeared, but we do need to reconnect with it.” BLUE SKY THINKING Johnson made “leveling up” his government’s defining theme, a boosterish vision of national renewal that promised to spray investment, jobs and opportunities around the U.K., and not just in traditional Tory heartlands.  That aspiration, alongside a clear pledge to “Get Brexit Done,” helped the party smash Labour in its former industrial strongholds. Now, that’s all turned to dust. Five years on, the Tories have just one MP in northeast England and only three northwest parliamentarians. At the general election last year, Labour reclaimed almost all the seats they lost and rebuilt much of the “Red Wall” Johnson prided himself on knocking down. Since then, “leveling up” has vanished from the Tory agenda. In a sign of their downgraded ambitions, the Tories launched their local election campaign in Buckinghamshire, the epitome of Home Counties safety for the party. “Leveling up is how we win the next election,” said former Tory MP Robert Goodwill, who retired from parliament last year. He believes his former Yorkshire seat could be regained from Labour by tapping into Johnsonian ideas about investment and renewal. “Leveling up was probably the most conservative thing that the last government did,” argued a second backbench Tory MP. “Conservatives understand the fortunate have a responsibility to the less fortunate.” Translating this rhetoric into reality is far harder. Reform UK came second in 60 northern English Labour seats last year, meaning the right-wing insurgents are seen as the beneficiaries of frustration with the government, not the Conservatives.  “They realize that the red wall isn’t particularly fertile territory for them,” Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary, University of London, said of the current Conservative operation. He highlighted how the Tories “never really built up any infrastructure” in seats won for the first time in 2019 — and then didn’t grow their local membership. It’s little wonder Reform have spied an opening. “It’s all looking pretty grim,” a Conservative shadow minister said. “[The] trouble is, Reform correctly identify the problems, but fail to identify the solutions (or at least workable solutions).” “Most thoughtful Conservatives recognize the battle is to reoccupy the post-Brexit ground,” the second backbench Tory MP quoted further above said. “That’s what we have to recapture … the spirit of 2019.”  DAMAGED GOODS Even if Johnson’s political vision has a hearing among beleaguered MPs, there is no looming desire to welcome the former PM himself back to the front line.  Numerous MPs POLITICO spoke to said the current leader, Kemi Badenoch, is the right person to hold the fort (a view shared, ominously, by Farage). Johnson’s reputation was tainted by his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and he resigned from parliament in 2023 after a damning report into lockdown-breaking Downing Street gatherings during the pandemic. He now spends his time writing newspaper columns and campaigning for Ukraine. A political comeback doesn’t feel imminent. Johnson’s reputation was tainted by his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. | Andy Rain/EFE via EPA “A lot of Conservatives have finally woken up to the fact that he’s as much a liability as he is an asset,” said Bale, citing Partygate’s unpopularity. “He doesn’t, at the moment, appear to many people to be the solution to the problem.” Pollster Joe Twyman highlighted how Johnson divided Tory members even as his legacy “cast a shadow” over the party. “The Conservatives have with Boris Johnson what I would describe as a ‘Life of Brian’ problem,” the Deltapoll co-founder said, referring to the famous Monty Python film. “There is a proportion of its supporters, particularly its members, and also some of its MPs, who believe that Boris Johnson is the messiah, and there’s another group of, particularly MPs and, to a lesser extent, supporters and members who believe he’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.”  Not everyone is sold on Johnson’s actual policy record, either. His premiership saw net migration surge from 254,000 in 2021 to 634,000 in 2022 — a move critics on the right are dubbing the “Boriswave.” Tory frontbencher Priti Patel’s recent attempts to defend her party’s approach to border control under Johnson didn’t go down well. “The perception is that we didn’t control immigration,” Goodwill admitted. “The challenge is to ensure that we are training enough people to do the jobs that people need skills to do.”  Conservative MP Martin Vickers, who supported Johnson’s leadership bid in 2019, defended the need for immigration, but recognized it remains a “massive issue” for voters.  “We have to face the reality that we do need some immigrant labor to carry out many crucial jobs,” the backbench MP argued, claiming there were not enough skilled workers in the British workforce for the jobs needed. Vickers also called for his party to “counter the simplistic nonsense” from Reform UK on the issue of deportations. “If Boris Johnson himself were asked in an interview about that, I imagine he would be able to give an explanation, excuse [or] justification that would go down relatively well with his supporters,” said pollster Twyman on immigration. But Twyman said that while it was the hot-button “chink in the armor” for Johnson, Rishi Sunak was the PM more remembered for failing to stop English Channel small boat crossings.  It is unsurprising, then, that Badenoch insisted the party is under new leadership.  “Whether it’s in the halls of Westminster or indeed, up and down the country in the Conservative clubs [and] bars, they don’t want the whispers of ‘Boris Johnson would have done a better job,’” said Twyman.  CHANGING THE CLIMATE  Badenoch has already created clear blue water between herself and Johnson on one key policy area: cutting carbon emissions to net zero. The ex-PM championed tackling climate change in office. Badenoch, by contrast, said it was “impossible” for the U.K. to reach net zero by 2050 without reducing living standards or reaching bankruptcy. Twyman said the Tory leader appeared to be acknowledging that people’s support for net zero lessens when they are asked to make specific sacrifices, and trying to “subtly emphasize that the Conservatives will put people first before the environment, at least in the short term.” Badenoch is “finessing our position” on net zero by making it “affordable and deliverable,” Vickers insisted.  However, there was skepticism about whether Reform supporters would really be convinced by the Tory pitch, when Farage himself is offering strident criticism of the entire agenda. “The key to winning back Reform voters is taking a stronger line and coming up with the right policies on immigration,” said John Flesher, the deputy director of the Conservative Environment Network. “The evidence that Reform voters are really hostile to climate and the environment just isn’t there.” Flesher added: “I don’t think she’s necessarily rejecting everything from that era, but it’s inevitable, given where the party is, that we are going to start to look at things differently.”  “The age in which we live demands a fittingly conservative response,” said the second Tory MP. “[Badenoch] needs to be more confident about setting out that vision.” 

LONDON — Most politicians would happily never talk about the pandemic again. But Britain is still living with its far-reaching consequences. Five years ago this week, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson solemnly ordered Brits into lockdown in a televised address to the nation — an unprecedented step that came as Covid-19 raged around the world and the U.K.’s National Health Service faced overwhelming pressures. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the pandemic. An estimated 1.9 million more were left with long Covid, experiencing sometimes debilitating symptoms for years after contracting the virus. A creaking British government machine was left badly exposed, accused of failing to prepare — and then moving too slowly when the crisis hit. The fallout cost Johnson his job. Politics was upended. Parliament went virtual. Daily government press conferences on the response to the crisis — and the rising death toll — were beamed into Brits’ living rooms each evening, making familiar faces of obscure ministers. And government borrowing ballooned as GDP plummeted and millions were placed on state-funded furlough in a bid to prevent a deeper catastrophe. Yet, five years on, Westminster sometimes acts like the pandemic never happened. The consequences of placing an entire nation into multiple lockdowns hardly featured during last year’s general election campaign. But the challenges Labour now grapples with, from a creaking economy to tottering public services and low public trust, seem inextricably linked to that time many Brits would rather forget. ECONOMIC TOLL As ministers scramble for savings, the economic consequences of Covid-19 are still apparent. First there was the short-term shock. Public sector borrowing shot up to £313 billion in 2020-2021 — about £179 billion more than expected before the pandemic. The furlough scheme, introduced by then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak, effectively paid workers to stay at home to avoid mass layoffs. That measure alone cost an eye-watering £96.9 billion. And although borrowing has since fallen again, scars remain. Five years ago this week, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson solemnly ordered Brits into lockdown in a televised address to the nation. | Jemal Countess/Getty Images British government debt — which sat at around £1.9 trillion in 2019-2020, soared to over £2.7 trillion by 2023-2024. The pandemic was one of two shocks contributing to this, with state subsidies also doled out to help Brits cope with the post-Ukraine invasion spike in global energy prices. “We’ve got a lot more public sector debt,” said Paul Johnson, director of the non-partisan Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank — and the government is paying “an enormous amount of interest” on that debt. This in turn restricts the current Labour government’s room for maneuver on a host of promises, and provides some of the backdrop to a tough fiscal statement looming later this month. Johnson of the IFS explained that the British economy is now probably smaller than if Covid-19 hadn’t happened — and that means people are “worse off than they otherwise would have been.” That feeling of being squeezed is hardly helped by increased court delays, ballooning hospital waiting lists, and a struggling educational system — all of which can be traced, at least in part, to the pandemic. In Dec. 2019, the month the virus was first detected in China, the overall NHS waiting list for England was estimated at 4.57 million people. By Jan. 2025, approximately 6.25 million people were on the list, including nearly 200,000 people who have been waiting more than a year for treatment. Waiting lists are now falling again — but it was a crisis the already-strained NHS could have surely done without. The pandemic heaped fresh pressure, too, on the British justice system. Courts were forced to operate remotely and spend more on video equipment as restrictions fell. A report by MPs on the Commons public accounts committee found that temporary, “Nightingale” courtrooms — set up to comply with social distancing guidelines — were typically three times as expensive to run as existing courtrooms. The same committee found that the Crown Court backlog of open cases had rocketed from 33,290 cases in March 2019 to 73,105 at the end of Sept. 2024. One of the most pressing impacts of the pandemic for many families was the closure of the vast majority of schools. The quality of remote learning provided in place of face-to-face lessons varied greatly. While GCSE grades have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels, some children simply haven’t returned to the classroom. Persistent absenteeism, where 10 percent or more of lessons are missed, increased from 10.5 percent of pupils in the fall and spring of 2018-2019 to 19.2 percent in 2023-2024. “There is clearly a break point where the productivity of those systems is much worse now than it was pre-Covid,” Johnson said — although he stressed that a direct correlation between Covid-19 and current public sector challenges is tricky to pin down. The inquiry’s first report into pandemic readiness, published last July, was damning. It found the government went into the crisis “ill prepared” and lacking resilience. | Carl Court/Getty Images On welfare, the U.K. is the only G7 country that has higher levels of economic inactivity now than it did before the pandemic — with 2.8 million people currently out of work due to long-term sickness compared to 2.1 million in July 2019. Johnson cautioned that it is “hard to know” why the U.K. has been specifically affected on this point. But it is against this stark backdrop that the Labour government seeks to reform welfare — risking a bitter battle with its own MPs in the process. Spending on working age health-related benefits increased from £36 billion pre-pandemic, in 2019-2020, to £48 billion by 2023-2024. The number of people claiming incapacity benefits has shot up by 28 percent, and 39 percent for disability benefits over the same period. STATE OF DISREPAIR The pandemic also exposed huge cracks in the way the British government machine works — with a blame-game between ministers and top officials playing out in the ongoing Covid-19 inquiry. There is no certainty about how long that probe will last, but it hopes to hold its final public hearings next year. The inquiry’s first report into pandemic readiness, published last July, was damning. It found the government went into the crisis “ill prepared” and lacking resilience. A parade of ministers and advisers in post at the time — including Boris Johnson and his abrasive top adviser-turned-nemesis Dominic Cummings — lamented how the Whitehall machine underestimated the pandemic’s scale, and some stressed that mass gatherings should have stopped much earlier. Cummings lambasted what he saw as the the civil service’s fatalism about the pandemic spreading, and claimed that Cabinet Office — at the heart of government — was a “dumpster fire” with the wrong people in charge. Starmer, the current prime minister, has begun to embark on what he’s billing as a fundamental shake-up of the British state, and late last week scrapped NHS England, the management body for the health service. Yet the public justification for that move has focused on duplicated comms teams in Whitehall — not the wider challenges exposed by the pandemic. Britain was not alone in flailing when the pandemic hit. “When you looked globally, very few countries were ready for a pandemic on that scale,” Institute for Government Senior Researcher Rosa Hodgkin said. But the outcomes for the U.K. were particularly stark — despite a highly effective vaccine rollout in 2021, it fared poorly on a number of measures compared with its G7 competitors, including excess deaths. The pandemic highlighted the perils of serious political dysfunction in a crisis too. Boris Johnson’s Conservative Downing Street warred over how to respond to the pandemic. It showed itself to be “particularly incapable” in terms of decision-making capabilities, according to IFS boss Paul Johnson. Groups including the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice continue to push for change. | Carl Court/Getty Images “I don’t think any of us were ready for anything of that scale,” admitted one former Conservative government adviser, granted anonymity to speak candidly. But they reflected: “Nobody and no institution and no organization can be ready for absolutely everything all at the same time.”  UNENVIABLE CHALLENGE Politicians were not exactly universally loved going into Covid-19. But the response to the pandemic — and the Partygate scandal which saw lockdown-busting, boozy gatherings take place in the heart of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street despite strict pandemic rules being in place — further dented trust in the political class. Ipsos polling in Nov. 2024 found just 11 percent of the public trusted politicians to tell the truth. Some 19 percent said they trusted politicians in 2018. If Labour is still grappling with that lack of faith in politics — a recent YouGov poll found just 24 percent of Brits trust Keir Starmer — there’s also an apparent keenness in the governing party not to bang on about the Tories’ pandemic failures. Once the acute phase of the pandemic was over, Covid-19 was no longer “front and center” of Labour’s attention, a former adviser to the party said. Instead, the then-opposition swiftly came to believe that highlighting the economic failures of Johnson’s chaotic successor Liz Truss was more fertile electoral ground. “We appeared to have our act together for the first time in many years,” the adviser said. They argued that talking about the pandemic and Partygate alone were not enough to guarantee an election victory. “The test is on the opposition to be ready for that moment when it comes.” But while Covid-19 quickly fell away as a “top-of-mind issue” for voters too, according to Ipsos pollster Gideon Skinner, Brits “still think [it] is having an ongoing impact on the state of the country.” As the inquiry continues its long work, groups including the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice continue to push for change. In a punchy report last year, the campaigners pitched 22 asks of the government in the hopes of improving readiness for the next pandemic. That includes creating a secretary of state for resilience and civil emergencies, a U.K. Standing Scientific Committee on Pandemics to advise on risks and preparedness, and a new National Office for Resilience. But, said Hodgkin from the IfG: “Governments here and in other countries have always struggled to do that learning lessons process after crises happen. There’s always a few years of really intense focus and a lot of discussion.” But then “either you have another crisis … so that lesson just gets subsumed into dealing with the next thing. Or there’s a feeling of: ‘we just want to go back to normal now’ and start getting on with other stuff.” “I don’t suppose politicians think very hard about why we’re in the state we’re in,” Johnson at the IFS concurred. “They’re dealing with the problems as they see them.”

LONDON — Boris Johnson insisted refurbishing his Downing Street flat was necessary because the heart of the British state “looked like a crack den.” The former prime minister was questioned about the expensive — and controversial — refurbishment of his living accommodation in office while promoting his new book “Unleashed.” “The whole thing looked like a crack den to be totally honest with you,” Johnson told LBC. “It needed to be refurbished.” Johnson faced criticism in 2021 when high-end designer Lulu Lytle’s refurbishment of the Downing Street flat cost at least £112,000. That far exceeded the £30,000 annual grant funded by the taxpayer. Media reports at the time said the then-PM’s spouse Carrie Johnson had slammed the “John Lewis furniture nightmare” they inherited from Theresa May in 2019. The funding of the refurb became particularly controversial when it was disclosed that Conservative donor David Brownlow helped cover the costs. The Conservatives were fined £17,800 by the Electoral Commission for failing to properly declare donations by Brownlow’s company Huntswood Associates used for the works. A government ethics probe cleared Johnson himself of any wrongdoing, but said he had acted “unwisely.” When pressed on a reported total bill of £200,000 for the works, Johnson told LBC host Nick Ferrari that he didn’t recognize that figure. “It wasn’t as much as that,” he said. Johnson would not be drawn on whether he liked the new wallpaper, which he denied was gold. “I’m not a great expert on wallpaper,” he added. Johnson’s book, out this week, has already raised eyebrows in Westminster for its candid revelations, including details of the late Queen Elizabeth II‘s health in her final years; a suggestion Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu bugged his bathroom; and the claim of a one-to-one pep talk with Prince Harry trying to dissuade the royal from leaving Britain.

LONDON — Keir Starmer has made a big play as he seeks to get a grip on his troubled time in Downing Street — but he’s by no means escaped the danger zone. Starmer entered No. 10 in July in a position of unusual strength after securing Labour’s biggest election win since 1997.  But it didn’t take long after Labour entered office for cracks to appear, with stories emerging of political allies being preferred for civil service jobs, Starmer and other ministers accepting freebies from donors and lobbyists, and discontent among government special advisers.  Starmer attempted to regain control of the situation Sunday in announcing the exit of Sue Gray, who as his chief of staff was central in guiding his transition to power, and a reshuffle of the advisers in his top team. Gray was the best-known of all Starmer’s backroom operatives, following her long service as a senior mandarin which included leading an inquiry into the “partygate” scandal that contributed to Boris Johnson’s ousting.  As a civil service veteran, Gray had been supposed to ensure Labour’s smooth transition into government. Instead, bubbling unhappiness at her approach boiled over in spectacular style, with rivals briefing against her in the media and apparently leaking information revealing she was paid more than the PM himself.  Speculation over how much longer she could carry on came to an abrupt end when No. 10 announced she would be stepping aside, taking up a new role as “envoy to the nations and regions” as a consolation prize. The move showed — not for the first time — that Starmer is willing to cut close ties in order to move forward, but it also leaves him exposed at an early juncture in his premiership.  One senior Whitehall official, granted anonymity like others in this piece to speak frankly, said: “Above all they still need to work out what this government actually wants for the country.” WARM RECEPTION Starmer’s righthand woman will now be replaced by his election guru, Morgan McSweeney, the government’s only backroom operative who could rival Gray in terms of notoriety.  The pair were widely reported to have clashed in the run-up to the reset. Gray was described by multiple colleagues as having sought an iron control over all matters inside Downing Street, allegedly creating a bottleneck that frustrated McSweeney’s political ambitions. (An ally of Gray denied this, saying she was in constant conversation with McSweeney.) Sue Gray was described by multiple colleagues as having sought an iron control over all matters inside Downing Street. | Leon Neal/Getty Images Starmer’s new chief of staff has a long history with the PM, whom McSweeney backed from an early stage as a figure who could help him wrest back control of the Labour Party from the socialist left under Jeremy Corbyn. McSweeney was later instrumental in honing their calculations about where they could win votes to great effect, evidenced by the landslide victory of July 4.  Starmer has also bolstered his team’s ranks with James Lyons, a veteran political journalist-turned-comms chief who will lead on strategic communications for Downing Street.  Labour insiders have generally expressed relief at the news, seeing the appointments as a sign of Starmer’s determination to run a tighter ship.  Stewart Wood, a Labour peer and former aide to ex-PM Gordon Brown, said: “It’s a welcome thing to have a political spine in the top team in a way that clearly wasn’t there in the first two or three months.” A new Labour MP, granted anonymity in order to speak frankly, agreed the appointments were a “positive” sign that the team at the top of the new government had taken the plunge and made a shakeup, “as opposed to just treading water for months without a decision, as we have seen in the past.” McSweeney commands strong loyalty among MPs because of his role in securing such an election victory — albeit on an historically low vote share for a majority government — and his backers were quick to hail his promotion.  “We needed a decisive moment and this was it,” said one ally, while another hailed his talent for “building a loyal, strong team.” The allies predicted that now the turf war with Gray was concluded, McSweeney could go on to notch quick wins in his new role by revisiting pay for special advisers, a source of tension for his predecessor who was accused of short-changing veteran Labour staffers, and by nailing down their contracts after they were left adrift at the outset of the new government. Alex Thomas, program director at the Institute for Government think tank, argued that the setup would also be strengthened by the imminent appointment of a new head of the civil service. The departure of the current incumbent, Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, was confirmed last week.  “The Cabinet secretary is the absolute lynchpin for all of this — the person who makes the system work on the prime minister’s behalf,” he said. LURKING FEARS Having defenestrated Gray, Starmer will now be under even more pressure to demonstrate that he is delivering. “I don’t think anyone was expecting this to happen in this way at this time,” said Thomas. “It just shows that the aspiration to run things more managerially and calmly is not sufficient.” Having defenestrated Sue Gray, Keir Starmer will now be under even more pressure to demonstrate that he is delivering. | Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images The prime minister will now need to find an answer to the criticism, which has dogged him from day one, that he lacks a strong domestic agenda. While he has a strong parliamentary majority, Labour was elected on an historically low vote share for an incoming government. Alastair Campbell, former PM Tony Blair’s communications director, told BBC Radio 4 that government was about “the relentless, endless, never-ending conversation that you’re having with the country about what you’re trying to do,” adding: “That bit has been largely missing.”  He added that in modern politics voters were “not prepared to give politicians much by way of benefit of the doubt, and that’s why you can’t afford too many missteps.” Two people with inside knowledge of Labour, one a former aide and one an MP, pointed out that Starmer’s priorities for government, known as his “five missions,” were a particular concern of Starmer and Gray. They predicted McSweeney could reformulate the somewhat clunky “missions” along punchier lines. Wood said the forthcoming budget, due Oct. 30, could be “a gateway moment into a slightly more secure sort of period” where Downing Street would be able to “make sure that there’s a narrative that every minister is speaking to.” AN EARLY RESHUFFLE? Another option available to Starmer and McSweeney is to reshuffle the Cabinet, as suggested to the Times, but several people in government said they doubted this was on the cards. One person familiar with the thinking in No. 10 said the main impact of the reshuffle talk was to “have everyone on their toes,” especially as ministers were having “very, very difficult conversations” with the Treasury ahead of the budget and spending review, expected early next year. The fear lurking behind all these predictions, however, is that one or more of these levers won’t work, and that ultimately it is Starmer’s instincts that are faulty — and that explain the rocky start to his premiership.  One longer-serving MP said McSweeney did not have Whitehall experience, “which could come back to bite us,” while “Starmer lacks people skills, and has surrounded himself with people with the same problem.” McSweeney had a previous spell as Starmer’s chief of staff in opposition, but was removed amid accusations that the Labour leader was foundering on his watch without a clear vision. The same MP complained there was now a “boys’ club” at the heart of No. 10, with those now in full charge of Downing Street blaming Gray for what had gone before. “Everything was always conveniently Sue’s fault, and not the lads’, despite all the major issues in Keir’s office predating her arrival,” she said. One of the McSweeney allies quoted above rejected those claims, pointing out that Hollie Ridley, recently installed as Labour’s general secretary, had been one of his most senior lieutenants.  He also has two new and well-regarded female deputies in Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson. For now, Starmer still has a host of considerable advantages on his side, notably a hefty parliamentary majority and a chief of staff with a proven winning record. But his early forced reset hints at the need for something more.

Boris Johnson retracted his apology for the Covid rule-breaching Partygate scandal that helped call time on his stint as British prime minister. In his upcoming memoir “Unleashed,” Johnson wrote that he made a “mistake” in offering “pathetic” and “groveling” apologies for the row, which “made it look as though we were far more culpable than we were.” Multiple coronavirus rule-breaking parties were held in Downing Street while the country faced pandemic restrictions. The Partygate affair, as it became known, dealt a major blow to Johnson’s administration, and he resigned as prime minister in 2022 following an exodus of top ministers. Johnson was fined by police over his attendance at one gathering and was later found to have knowingly misled parliament about his knowledge of the gatherings. He rejected the findings of the committee investigating Partygate, and dramatically quit as an MP. In an interview with ITV News airing Friday night, Johnson said his “blanket apology” for Covid rule-breaking “at the beginning” of the scandal had opened the door to “accusations that then rained down on officials who’d been working very hard in Number 10 [Downing Street] and elsewhere.” “And by apologizing I had sort of inadvertently validated the entire corpus and it wasn’t fair on those people,” he said. Johnson was originally due to be interviewed by the BBC, but the sit-down was pulled at the 11th hour after BBC presenter Laura Kuenssberg mistakenly sent her briefing notes to the former prime minister.