Keir Starmer has let the Blob run amok

The one thing Keir Starmer was supposed to be good at was what the Blob reverentially calls ‘governing’. He might be dull but at least he was meant to be competent – ‘No Drama Starmer’, the ‘adult in the room’. Under a Starmer government, we were told, the civil service, advisers and ministers would work together like the pistons, oil pumps and cylinders of a well-oiled machine, propelling the nation to ‘change’ for the better. The forced resignation this week of the head of the civil service, Chris Wormald, has put any such notion to bed. The car has well and truly broken down.

Wormald’s resignation followed weeks of negative reports about his performance, leaked to the press by members of the government. Starmer, it was said, blamed Wormald for the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK ambassador to Washington in 2024. The reports insist that the outgoing cabinet secretary failed to properly ‘vet’ Mandelson – a strange accusation, considering the friendship between ‘Petey’ and the paedophile financier, Jeffrey Epstein, was well known even to casual observers of politics.

Still, Wormald’s departure has come as little surprise. Starmer was repeatedly warned that Wormald was too pedestrian, too conventional to affect any meaningful change. Yet it seems the PM was unable to resist the appeal of this middling bureaucratic functionary. After all, this made him Starmer’s kind of man. His demise was summed up best by Robert Colvile, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, who told the Spectator: ‘Starmer appointed the candidate most like Starmer – against advice – and was then shocked when he failed in exactly the ways Starmer is failing.’

The sacking of Wormald capped off a chaotic week at No10. Last Sunday, Morgan McSweeney resigned as Starmer’s chief of staff, also for his role in Mandelson’s appointment. Then No10’s director of communications, Tim Allan, quit on Monday after just five months on the job, issuing a notably curt statement of resignation. He was Starmer’s fourth communications director to pass through Downing Street. It is safe to say that this Labour government – contrary to Andrew Marr’s now widely derided prediction of an era of ‘peace and stability’ – has proven as dysfunctional as the Conservative government that preceded it.

Although reports suggest that McSweeney, Wormald and Allan are men of very different characters, with varying degrees of competence, they all ultimately failed for the same reason. They were all given what can only be described as an impossible task: either implementing Starmer’s ‘plan for change’ or selling it to the public. The trouble is, there is no such plan and there never was one.

Even a more adept cabinet secretary than Wormald would have been dragged down by the prime minister’s visionless leadership. Starmer has never had a compelling reason for seeking high office or any vision for the country. And while in No10, he has oscillated wildly on every issue imaginable. He said that immigration had made Britain an ‘island of strangers’ only to then disown the speech. His one attempt at economic reform – reducing the UK’s unsustainable welfare spending – was abandoned at the first hint of a backbench rebellion. He brushed off grooming gangs as a ‘far right’ conspiracy theory before deciding that the scandal deserved a full national inquiry. Could even a half-decent adviser or senior civil servant do a decent job under these conditions?

This defect is not new. Rather, it was evident from the earliest days of Starmer’s prime ministership. Sue Gray, his first chief of staff, lasted just three months before her resignation in October 2024. Gray was to ‘lead our work preparing for a mission-led Labour government’, Starmer outlined. It was as ridiculous a task as Wormald’s brief to ‘deliver bold and ambitious long-term reform’. In the end, Gray was dispatched because Starmer had not received a ‘plan’ for the first 100 days of Labour’s administration. It was an ominous and telling incident. After all, shouldn’t the prime minister – of all people – at least have had an inkling of what he wants to do in government?

Following Wormald’s departure, there appears to be no shortage of candidates eager to jump into the void. And yet there is no reason to expect things will be any different this time. Starmer’s ‘favoured successor’ to Wormald is widely believed to be Antonia Romeo, the permanent secretary to the Home Office since 2024. In other words, she has led the department that is largely responsible for the most crippling failure of Starmer’s reign: the relentless rise in illegal immigration. Incredibly, Steven Swinford of The Times reports that Romeo had ‘impressed Starmer with her handling of the small-boats crisis since taking over at the Home Office’. With around 66,000 migrants having made it over the English Channel since Starmer came to power, one can only wonder in horror what ‘disappointment’ would look like.

Then again, you can see the appeal of Romeo to someone like Starmer. She is undeniably a creature of the Blob, with all the ideological baggage that entails. Romeo served as the ‘civil service gender-inclusion champion’ and has waxed lyrical about her efforts to make departments ‘more inclusive for trans staff’. As a committed woke activist, her claim to want to stop illegal immigration is about as credible as Starmer’s, a man who venerates the very human-rights laws that have made this task impossible.

Romeo’s failure as permanent secretary at the Home Office isn’t the only red flag to her appointment. As consul general to New York, she requested more than £70,000 from the government to redecorate her house. When this was refused, her former staff members claimed that she asked them to solicit private companies to carry out the renovations for free. Various reports suggest she spent most of her time in the Big Apple ingratiating herself with celebrities. Former staff have also accused her of bullying. There seems to be little to recommend her for the most senior position in the civil service, beyond being a career Blobber.

Worse, Romeo’s appointment would be bound to precipitate yet another crisis. Speaking to Channel 4 News on Wednesday, Simon MacDonald, who was in charge of the Foreign Office during her stint in New York, made a remarkable intervention for a former senior civil servant. He said he would help No10 with any ‘investigation’ into her, heavily hinting that he’d try to block her from the job. ‘Sometimes appealing through the media is more effective than doing it direct’, he said. Then Gus O’Donnell, a former cabinet secretary, popped up on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to slam Starmer directly. Meanwhile, senior civil servants have spent much of the week briefing the media anonymously, leaking about Wormald’s sacking, Romeo’s skeletons and Starmer’s dreadful judgement.

Rarely, it seems, has a prime minister been able to command so little authority. His backbenchers are constantly threatening to rebel. Several of cabinet colleagues can barely hide their desire to replace him. And most extraordinary and ironic of all, even civil servants are breaking ranks to slam him and his decisions in the media.

Keir Starmer’s emboldening of the Blob will surely be his undoing.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.