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.

Marie Antoinette never actually said, ‘Let them eat cake’. However, the Right Honourable Baroness Morgan of Ely, the first minister of Wales, really did say, ‘If people want [local] businesses to succeed, they need to use them, stop buying online, get out of their homes, and stop watching Netflix. They need to stop buying that bottle of wine and go out to the pub.’

Needless to say, those businesses in question, most notably local pubs, are suffering as a direct result of specific policies of Labour administrations in both Westminster and Cardiff Bay. It is therefore pure gaslighting to blame the people – especially in Wales, where the choice for many people outside the public-sector bubble is not between Netflix, or bottles of wine, or overpriced beer at struggling pubs, but between buying basic groceries or keeping the central heating on during winter.

Eluned Morgan’s statement perfectly captured the outlook of an out-of-touch political class lacking all understanding of those it is ruling and meant to be representing. It is why what was meant to be impossible is likely to happen in May: Labour will almost certainly lose Wales.

The Welsh Assembly, now known officially as the Senedd, was designed specifically so that this could never happen. Even if Labour did not win an absolute majority, the electoral system, combined with the cultural incompatibility of the opposition parties, seemed to ensure that the administration would always be Labour-led. This has been the case ever since the assembly’s first day in 1999, even when the Labour share of the vote fell below 30 per cent. It was on this understanding that New Labour established it in the first place – to ensure Labour would always have a power base in Wales, no matter how badly it was doing in the UK as a whole.

That is almost certain to change after the next election in May. Labour is now running a distant third in the Welsh opinion polls behind Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. The latest YouGov poll actually has Labour in joint-fifth place, behind the Greens, on just 10 per cent, in a statistical tie with the Conservatives. Let that sink in: Labour, which basically owned Wales for the past century, is struggling for fifth place against the Conservatives… in Wales.

To be fair, it is not Morgan’s fault, even if she has done nothing to stop the slide. The Titanic-like final plunge in the polls is to a great extent a reflection of a similar collapse in Labour support all over the UK. Only a quarter of Welsh people who voted Labour at the 2024 General Election currently say they will vote for it in May. Labour may bounce back a little if Sir Keir goes. An actual fifth place in Wales is unlikely – but not as unlikely as it rising above third as things stand.

Even without the Starmer factor, the solid Labour base in Wales has been crumbling for some time now. Welsh Labour has now had more than a quarter of a century to put what it calls ‘clear red water’ between Cardiff Bay and Westminster, and the results have not been good. Those who supported the establishment of the assembly in the 1997 referendum, and have controlled it ever since have failed miserably to deliver on their promises. Wales has fallen further behind England in terms of most of the accepted indicators of economic development, health and education since 60 elected Welsh politicians replaced the single Westminster-appointed secretary of state hitherto in charge of Welsh public services. The imposition of the widely hated 20mph speed limit sums up the image of Wales as a nation stuck in the slow lane.

The fight to replace Labour is between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. The public mood is not settled but YouGov polling is probably accurate in putting Plaid well ahead. Ill-informed commentators attribute this to a putative surge in support for Welsh independence, based on a survey last year claiming that 41 per cent now support it. However it turns out that this figure was a proportion of ‘decided’ voters only, with only 35 per cent of all Welsh voters in favour, and 50 per cent against. A YouGov poll last month has since reduced the proportion of all voters in favour of independence from 35 per cent to 26 per cent, closer to the norm in recent years. It is significant that Plaid itself is downplaying independence as an issue in its election campaign.

Plaid’s real advantages are organisation and leadership. It was a strong local organisation on the ground that led to Plaid’s victory over Reform in last October’s Caerphilly by-election. In Rhun ap Iorwerth, Plaid has a leader with polished media skills thanks to his years as a supposedly neutral political commentator with BBC Wales – which tells you all you need to know about BBC Wales.

By contrast Reform has little ground game and no real Welsh leadership. Nigel Farage’s belated appointment of Dan Thomas, a former leader of a London borough council, as nominal head of the party in Wales last week was a triple mistake. (This is no disrespect to the individual in question, about whom I, like everyone else in Wales, knows nothing – which itself is a problem.)

The first mistake is the fact he was appointed rather than elected, which plays into the narrative that Reform is essentially one man’s ego trip. The second is that he was until very recently a Conservative, playing into the narrative that Reform is a refuge for the people who misgoverned the UK for 14 years. And the third is that he is essentially an English politician, playing into the narrative that Reform is an English nationalist party – unsurprisingly, this does not go down well in Wales.

One is reminded of the folly of the Conservative governments appointing a chain of English secretaries of state for Wales in the late Eighties and early Nineties. Most were competent, and at least one was very good, but that was not enough to overcome the impression that London viewed Wales as a colony best governed from London because none of the natives was up to the job. The once considerable Conservative local base in Wales shrivelled during this time and never recovered. Reform is making exactly the same unforced error.

One can only imagine what Reform’s existing activists in Wales think about this collective slap in the face. It is worth noting that, contrary to stereotype, many Reform supporters are Welsh speakers and most probably consider themselves patriotically Welsh.

There is still one strong card Reform could play: it should come out unequivocally in favour of abolishing the Senedd altogether, or at least holding a referendum on the possibility. The last proper opinion poll on the question suggested that just under a third of Welsh voters would favour this. The precedent of the EU referendum suggests that this figure would increase dramatically if abolition was turned from a vague possibility not really worth considering properly into a viable proposition. It is fair to say that the assembly, as it is still generally known, is not embedded deeply in the affections of the Welsh people.

Indeed, the single-issue Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party won nearly four per cent of the vote at the last Senedd election in 2021. A singularly ignorant professor of politics at an assembly-funded university proclaimed that this was proof that the people supported the assembly. As anyone who really knows politics could tell him, most votes are almost inevitably cast for the big parties which are the only serious contenders, either for tribal reasons or for pragmatic reasons, because a vote for anyone else is wasted. For a tiny, underfunded single-issue party with no mainstream media support to get almost four per cent is therefore a remarkable achievement, hinting at more widespread dissatisfaction.

Compare that with the just over three per cent won by the Eurosceptic Referendum Party in the 1997 General Election. It took nearly two decades, but there was eventually a referendum on EU membership, and the majority of Brits supported Leave. Great oaks really do grow from little acorns. Reform could do the same in Wales, calling for a referendum on the Senedd’s future, and it would take a lot less time than Brexit did. Abolishing the assembly would be something tangible, something big, not just the usual hackneyed promises to ‘cut waste’.

In the meantime, Reform would benefit from a simple bit of psephological arithmetic. The third of Welsh voters who favour abolition are more numerous than the quarter who are currently likely to vote Reform in Wales according to that latest YouGov poll. A firm commitment to abolition would therefore make Reform look more attractive to an additional chunk of the electorate. It could be a game changer in the May election.

Otherwise, Plaid is likely to emerge as the largest party in May. With the support of the Greens, with whom it has very strong ties in Wales, Plaid is likely to be able to form an administration. If there are insufficient Greens elected, there remains the option of a deal with the remnants of Welsh Labour.

Politically, Plaid and Welsh Labour are in any case not that far apart. Welsh Labour’s ‘clear red water’ strategy aligns neatly with Plaid’s own radical leftward shift. Plaid has collaborated with Labour before. Since Labour has rarely enjoyed an absolute majority, it has usually governed with open or tacit support from Plaid. It might be Labour’s turn to repay the favour. And so Labour might not be as politically dead as it deserves to be after all.

The coming catastrophe for Welsh Labour and a glorious triumph of Plaid Cymru would not really change much for most people in Wales. Unless Plaid or Labour try to spring a populist surprise at the last moment, their policies and attitudes are basically the same. Anyone hoping for genuine change is likely to be disappointed.

Then again, how can we be disappointed when we never really expected anything else? Such is the fatalistic mood across the spectrum in Wales, 27 years into devolution.

John Winterson Richards is a writer on Welsh affairs and author of The Xenophobe’s Guide to the Welsh.

The real Keir Starmer. That, we’re told, is what we’re in for, now that the embattled PM is embarking upon what feels like the 47th ‘reset’ of his 19-month rule.

Starmer is the Windows 95 prime minister, requiring endless reboots just to stay functioning. But it certainly feels different this time around. His last, juddering stand while Labour MPs ponder when, not if, to oust him.

With the departure of chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and chief mandarin Chris Wormald, No10 spinners insist Starmer is now free to be true to his values and deliver for Britain. The problem is that Starmer seems to have few principles to speak of and no idea what he’s doing.

At a pseudo-event in Welwyn Garden City this week, Starmer tried to paint his government as Proper Labour, focussed on the ‘cost of living’ and led by the ‘most working-class cabinet in the history of this country’.

The working classes still haven’t got the memo. Labour now polls in third place among blue-collar Brits, with Reform UK commanding a double-digit lead and the Tories clinging on in second. Labour is, however, the most popular party among the privately educated.

Indeed, one of the few historic achievements of this generation of Labourites is severing the long-fraying link between their party and the working classes. Starmer, in his role as shadow (anti-)Brexit secretary during the Jeremy Corbyn years, is more culpable than most.

And if this is the most ‘working class’ cabinet in history, it doesn’t reflect the longer, historical trend of plummeting worker representation in the Commons, driven almost entirely by the colonisation of the Parliamentary Labour Party by lawyers, think-tankers and the Third Sector.

This is a clue as to why Labour not only routinely scorns and ignores the concerns of working-class people, but also embraces policies diametrically opposed to their interests – such as paying vast sums of money to keep people locked out of work on welfare or making energy more expensive to give Ed Miliband a warm feeling. Best of luck on tackling the cost of living, Keir.

Starmer’s pitch for power was all about technocratic delivery – hence, those interminable speeches setting out his ‘missions’, to be measured against ‘milestones’, all anchored by the ‘foundation stones’ of ‘economic security, national defence and secure borders’.

We can now see how that turned out. Housebuilding is in its deepest downturn since Covid, defence chiefs are near-mutinous over insufficient spending, and those gangs remain stubbornly unsmashed. Last year, small-boats crossings hit a near-record high.

Whether or not Labour actually wants to smash them is far from clear. Still, for a man who prides himself on process, Starmer appears to be across all the wrong details, even fussing about the dress code for meetings, if the insider accounts are to be believed. ‘You’d get a note the night before a meeting telling everyone to make sure they’re wearing smart casual’, one Downing Street source recently told Tim Shipman of the Spectator.

If it isn’t the working class, or managerial prowess, what does this Labour Party stand for? On current evidence, the only thing that unites the Labourites is their glee in calling critics of mass immigration racist – be they Nigel Farage or Manchester United part-owner Jim Ratcliffe. Apparently, more than a decade of this tactic backfiring spectacularly – sending former Labour areas into the arms of the pro-Brexit right – hasn’t killed their buzz.

It’s not that Starmer’s Labour doesn’t have its views on the world. Like much of the liberal left, it is wedded to all of the worst orthodoxies of the age. But even so, it all feels reflexive, inherited, vibes-based. And so their shibboleths crumble under even modest scrutiny, as seen in their comical responses to any hack who asks if a woman can have a penis. They cling to greenism or wokism or whatever not out of any deep thinking, but a desperation to appear purposeful and virtuous.

That Keir Starmer ever became leader of the Labour Party is a damning indictment of the Labour Party. But the current challengers vying to replace him remind us he is hardly a pygmy among giants. Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham – they may, unlike Starmer, appear to have a pulse. But they have no answers to the crises confronting us, offering up either New Labour nostalgia or the warm bath of soft-leftism.

The Keir Starmer premiership has shown you cannot ‘deliver’ in politics if you have no politics in the first place, and you cannot empower the working classes if you consider them to be either bigots or charity cases or both. Starmer has proven to be a truly woeful prime minister. On that front alone, he has surpassed expectations. But he is the leader that Labour – a party that no longer knows who or what it is for – deserves.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater_.