Competence Doesn't Trend - Labour's Reshuffle and the Risk of Managerial Politics
Order Over Theatre Is Grown Up and Lovely - but Without Direction or Comms, Voters Will Be Left Cold
People may have noticed that I quite enjoy politics (if Bearly Politics as the name of this publication didn't give it away, I'm not sure how many more hints are needed). My husband thinks of it as my "sport", and to a large extent, it is. The back and forth of the political arena, the strategies that are deployed, the risks taken (and not taken, and sometimes, not assessed), are absolutely fascinating to my very weird brain.
Which is why I always get excited when a reshuffle is announced. I presume this is the same way that people that like football feel when there is an exchange of players (I'm really not sure how that works), and with the amount of trailing that's been done over the past few weeks, I thought to myself that today was going to be exciting! New faces! New roles! New excitement!
Readers, I was rather disappointed.
The Labour reshuffle announced this morning was… bland.
There have been zero headlines shouting about cabinet casualties, not a single dramatic exit with a cardboard box, no leaked WhatsApp messages hinting about betrayal or revenge. Just another tightening of the screws of Starmer’s grip on Number 10, delivered with all the flair of a quarterly board report.
The Strange Comfort of Blandness
Now, before I go too deep into the analysis (and criticism) of the reshuffle, I will acknowledge that the perceived blandness is, to a large extent, a good thing - it’s a far cry from the complete and utter chaos that we had under the Tories, which leaned far too far the other way into completely unhinged bloodsport.
Can I remind everyone about Boris “Bag-of-Lies” Johnson’s constant loyalty tests, where it felt like ministers were being shoved on stage like contestants in a particularly vindictive gameshow?
Or Liz “The Iceberg” Truss’s multiple panicked reshuffles that she did in a desperate attempt to shore up the tiny little bit of credibility that she had left after her mini-budget turned the pound into so much useless confetti?
Or even Rishi Sunak’s incredibly weird decision to resurrect David Cameron from exile, which had Kay Burley nearly topple over in shock and which felt more like soap opera than statecraft?
Those certainly were the head days of high drama - which would be fine if you enjoyed bloodsport and the economy as collateral damage, but the truth is, most people don’t.
Anyway. Back to today.
I think we can all agree, the changes we got today are not about theatre - they’re about control. And that, in and of itself, is to a large extent both refreshing and at the same time revealing. Where the media (and I) wanted some drama, they got spreadsheets and management org charts instead. This was definitely less “Game of Thrones” and more like watching someone reorganise their filing system1 - definitely less exciting, but possibly just a bit more effective.
The question, though, is whether this buttoned-up approach to governance that Labour has become known for will be enough to actually address the immense challenges ahead, or whether Labour’s obsession with the appearance of competence will end up coming at the cost of the kind of political momentum that actually speaks to voters.
The Anatomy of Command
Looking a bit more closely at what today’s reshuffle actually did, I’m getting the feeling that Starmer might actually be trying to build something - and that something is feeling mighty familiar to me. Specifically, it harks back to what suspiciously looks like Blair’s “Command-and-Control” operation.
Darren Jones is the key appointment - he’s been lifted and shifted from Chief Secretary to the Treasury into a brand spanking new role as Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister2. This move feels like a particularly important one, as Jones will now be the man to focus entirely on the “day-to-day delivery of the prime minister’s priorities”, i.e. he’s the guy whose entire job is going to be to make sure that things actually happen instead of getting announced and then promptly forgotten about.
He’ll be replaced by James Murray, who, in turn, goes from Exchequer Secretary, while Dan Tomlinson, who has to date served as the government’s “growth mission champion”. It all has a bit of a feeling of musical chairs, but there does seem to be some purpose, including rewarding the 2024 intake while not completely upsetting the government status quo.
The one that caught my attention the most, and which happened a few days ago, is Baroness Minouche Shafik - a former deputy governor of the BoE, who gets the nod for Chief Economic Advisor. This looks to be one of his stronger moves, bringing in someone with some serious technical expertise to look at addressing the United Kingdom’s chronic productivity malaise.
On the comms front, things are a bit more interesting again. Tim Allan - a Blair-era adviser turned PR Exec - comes back to politics as Exec Director of Government communications, with James Lyons being booted out after lasting barely a year. He has a helluva job ahead of him, because, we can all admit, Labour’s comm strategy to date has been completely dismal.
Overall, the reshuffle feels to me a lot more like buying a new filing cabinet than a major, groundbreaking reset. It’s definitely not exciting, but there is the potential here for getting more things done. I personally like when technocrats come in - they speak the language of my people, and the biggest signal that I’m getting is one of “order”.
The problem with this is, I don’t think it’s in any way nearly enough.
Delivery Without Direction
What Labour keeps proving to me, time and time again, is that it can move the furniture. What it hasn’t proven in any way or form is whether they actually know what to put on the shelves. Their first year in power has been incredibly instructive.
The Winter Fuel Payment3 fiasco is the prime example here - first came the sweeping, terribly stern cut to eligibility for millions of people. And then they took a massive dive in the polls. A panicked rethink was initiated, followed by a partial restoration. We were told, oh so very sincerely, that this was “hard choices”, but it merely looked like the government had to very quickly learn in public that pensioners existed and do, in fact, get cold.
The Welfare Reform Package was an even biggest disaster. Ministers tried their best to force this particular marshmallow through a key hole, and still got hit with one of the biggest rebellions of this parliament4, before rapidly conceding on safeguards for disabled people that should have been there from day one. It was the the worst of all outcomes - Labour managed to alienate their base, terrify swing voters who heard cuts and then retreated just enough to anger absolutely everyone without winning anyone.
All in all their approach has felt like policy by smoke alarm. And no, that’s not a good thing.
At the same time, the best story that they can tell - Angela Rayner’s worker’s rights agenda - is barely being spoken about. It’s a brilliant Labour policy that actually has things the help people, like:
Ending exploitative zero-hours practices ✅
Fairer sick pay ✅
A legal duty on employers to prevent harassment ✅
The introduction of day one rights ✅
That’s good! These are genuinely positive, long-overdue changes to our labour market that can actually increase a paycheque and strengthen a spine, and yet they’re being completely drowned out by self-inflicted wounds and a comms campaign that feels totally out of touch, as if it belongs in the late 1990s, not in the digital age.
And the reality is that you’re just not going to be able to grind your way out of contradictions, own goals and a comms strategy that’s completely broken.
Labour has built a machine that’s capable of delivering - but what it hasn’t done is give any clarity on exactly what it’s delivering, or why it matters.
The Farage in the Ointment
The other issue that needs to be discussed is, unfortunately, Reform.
While there is some comfort in the fact that everyone in their posts feels vaguely qualified, what I keep coming back to is the lack of excitement. The feeling that there really is no significant renewal or symbolic gesture that can capture the public imagination.
The risk here is that the public sees competence, but very little charisma. Blair, for all his faults (and by god, there are many), was brilliant at combining the ruthless control that we’re seeing with Starmer with a sense of momentum and possibility. You had the feeling that things weren’t just being managed - they were being transformed.
This really matters because Labour is lagging behind Reform UK in the polls. Downing Street has spent the entire summer completely on the back foot on the economy, migration and just about everything else.
Farage, ever the populist, has mastered the art of offering chaos as clarity. Where Starmer presents a process that requires patience and trust, Reform UK offers a sugar rush of excitement, straight into the veins of their supporters. They give immediate, emotionally satisfying answers that dissolve under even the lightest scrutiny, but feel undeniably good in the moment.
“Take Back Control!”
“Send Them Back!”
“Operation Restoring Justice!”
None of these are actual policies, they’re emotional shortcuts that bypass the messy realities of governance, but Farage doesn’t need economic advisors, delivery frameworks or actual plans that survive brushing up lightly against reality - because he’s not actually trying to deliver anything. He’s selling the feeling of having answers, not the answers themselves.
A Governance Style for Days Past
Meanwhile, Starmer is stuck offering his ordered package as boredom. His reshuffle might (vaguely) signal competence, but the problem is that competence doesn’t trend. Competence isn’t giving voters someone to blame, or a story to tell themselves about why their lives feel more shit than they should.
This is all part and parcel of Labour’s new governing style - cautious, centralised and managerial. It’s the approach of people (admittedly, people like me), who believe that good governance is its own reward, that competence will eventually be recognised and voters will reward results.
Except politics doesn’t work that way anymore. Voters don’t give marks for administrative efficiency or incremental improvement - they respond to stories, emotions and the sense that someone understands their frustrations.
The biggest risk that the Labour government faces is that it becomes so focused on governing well that they completely neglect to explain to people why that matters. There is a snowball’s chance in hell that this reshuffle will head off Reform’s surge in the polls, and something radical needs to happen - both in policy and communication.
At the end of the day, even the technocrat that I believe myself to be needs to admit that politics isn’t about running a tidy office - it’s about making people believe that better governance, outcomes and futures are possible, and that what you’re doing will genuinely make their lives better.
That’s the story that needs to be told. Command without clarity is no more than administration. If Number 10’s new machine can’t stop the zig-zags, amplify the wins and bury the unforced errors, voters will draw some obvious conclusions - the biggest of which is that while the filing cabinet may be immaculate, the approach is anaesthetising - and the answers, and excitement, may just lie elsewhere.
I will freely admit that I would probably enjoy watching this as a reality TV show - I just question whether it should run the country.
Sounds very fancy, doesn’t it?
Full Disclosure: I was, and am, in favour of WFA being means tested - the problem is the way that this government went about it was an absolute shambles, and, again, extremely poorly communicated.
So far.
Not sure about the reshuffle. I will wait and see. Re Labour's comms though - they have been almost non-existent, or so underwhelming to not even seem worth hearing at times. They need someone like US Gavin Newsom's head of comms. A bit more personality and humour would help enormously. And a big personality for interviews to counter Frog face would also be welcome x
Very pleased to see Darren Jones in his new position. He's been impressive throughout and I hope will add some spice at the top.
I'm also longing for a much more effective comms strategy. I like Starmer and I think he's doing good things domestically and internationally (particularly given the mess he inherited), but that's not enough nowadays to win over voters who only remember the Winter Fuel policy, etc. (even if these policies didn't affect them). Unfortunately, Starmer does lack charisma and his own social media is universally flatfooted, even when tweeting about really important and markedly positive policies. Labour needs to put Farage and co. in their box and regain the poll lead -- that's going to be a real challenge given the pro-Farage press and the way that Farage has manoeuvred the small boats into poll position over the summer, but there is time to do it. If a convincing narrative begins to be put out and people start to feel, individually, the benefit of the changes being made.