Political Observer almost grasps the Colvile Methodology?
Aug 03, 2025
Headline: Keir Starmer’s not the issue. But nor were Johnson, May, Brown…
Sub-headline: This time last year the prime minister was at his height but he has steadily become more and more disliked. Who’s to blame for this sorry state of affairs?
Editor: The Reader who attemps to come to terms with Robert Colvile latest historically inflected essay: it’s full of self-serving references of an Oxbridger, who brings to bear the very weight of that History, in near capital letters? These paragrasphs almost sings of Telegraph Myopia?
The end is Nige.” That was how The Sun’s front page reported my discovery, in 2017, that “Nigel” had fallen off the official list of baby names. At the time, it seemed not just striking but symbolic: with Ukip at 2 per cent in the polls, and its former leader out of frontline politics, Nigel’s best days really did seem to lie in the past.
Last week, the list came out again. In the register office as in public life, Nigel was firmly back, with five boys both this year and last — one of whom even joined the Reform leader on the campaign trail in Clacton. Rishi was there, and Kemi too. But poor old Keir had disappeared.
Again, the symbolism was irresistible. This time last year, Starmer was at his height as prime minister, delivering a muscular response to the riots that captured the national mood. But he has steadily become more and more disliked. Today, only 19 per cent of voters tell YouGov he is doing a good job, against 69 per cent who disagree. As of the latest polls, he is in the negatives even among Labour voters.
…
Editor : Mr. Colevie’s pastisch of History is meant to ensorsel the reader!
But the second tradition is far older. Indeed, it’s one of the oldest patterns in political history. In Britain, as in many other countries and cultures, it was not just treason but verging on heresy to criticise a divinely appointed king. So the discontented would always stress that their complaints were not about the wise and goodly monarch, but the evil counsellors around them. As late as the Civil War, the Roundheads blamed the outbreak of hostilities not on Charles I himself, but “an abounding malignity in those parties and Factions; who doe still labour to foment Jealosies betwixt the King and this Parliament” — godless bishops, sinister Jesuits and treacherous nobles. It took six full years of war for them to adopt the literally revolutionary position that the blame truly lay with “Charles Stuart, that man of blood”
…
But the problem for the government is that it’s never the advisers. It’s always the king. Just like it was for King John or Charles I or any of the others. Indeed, one of the peculiarities of the British state is that there are surprisingly few formal, institutional structures around the prime minister. Instead, Downing Street functions almost like a royal court, moulding itself around the personality of each new incumbent.
Editor: Historical Reiteration, via Mrs. Thatcher.
Ironically, for all her intractable reputation, one of the few to manage it is arguably Margaret Thatcher, who retooled her administration in 1981-2 after receiving perhaps the most wounding memo ever sent to a PM by their underlings. (“Your own management competence, like that of most of your colleagues, is almost non-existent … You break every rule of good man-management. You bully your weaker colleagues. You criticise colleagues in front of each other and in front of their officials…”).
Recently, on the train back from Kyiv, my colleague Josh Glancy asked Starmer about standing in the spotlight of history. The PM, he wrote, bristled impatiently: “I don’t do all this self-analysis bit. I thought you’d picked that up a year ago. You’re still desperately trying to get in there. Come on.”
Starmer’s position is that his job is not to construct fancy theories. It is to sit down and do the work — to make decision after decision until there are no more problems left to solve.
Editor: The Reader arrives at the final evaluation of what Starmer is, via a shopworn quote from Bismark ‘a Sphinx without a riddle’. Note the tone of self-congatulation, as somehow the point, yet what the reader confronts is an Oxbridger wallowing in political kitsch!
But all truly successful politicians tell a story about themselves. Whitehall, too, works best when everyone can buy into a single shared narrative, imposed from the centre. Starmer not only hasn’t done that, but actively resists it. The result, to steal a put-down from Bismarck, is that he ends up seeming like a Sphinx without a riddle. And the government ends up with a majority but no mission. It may be that the PM can turn things around — that by the time he leaves office, maternity wards will be packed with little Keirs, Morgans and Angelas. But I can’t help feeling that progressive Keir will soon be discarded alongside change Keir, growth Keir, and tough decisions Keir with kung-fu grip. Because if there’s one lesson from history for our leaders, it’s that the fault lies not in their advisers, but in themselves.
Political Observer
StephenKMackSD's Blog 