'Keir Starmer Is Out of His Depth and Out of His Time'
Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
It's hard in modern politics not to think constantly about leadership. It's little wonder. Traditional politics feels incapable of dealing with the complexities and the sheer scale of the challenges we face. So, we look to roll the dice, again and again, to find a leader capable of leading us. What we don't do is stop and reconceptualise the nature of leadership in the 21st century.
I was reminded of this while reading Tom McTague's recent profile of Keir Starmer, in his first outing as editor of the New Statesman.
I came away feeling slightly more sympathetic to Starmer but not really in a good way, more sorrow and sadness than warmth or regard. Starmer, as his handling of the welfare rebellion inside Labour has shown, is simply out of his depth, trying to fix our fiendishly complex problems for us.
An Island of Neighbours: Rebuilding Labour from the Ground-Up
Clementine Boucher and Luke Hurst, of the cross-party think tank Compass, share practical insights from its conference in London in May, focusing on how a 'decade of radical renewal' can become a reality
Clementine Boucher and Luke Hurst
In the interviews for the profile, Starmer talks about the responsibility he feels to always step up and organise those around him. At one level such a trait is admirable, the sense of public service in Starmer feels almost profound.
But it's the sense of his own uniqueness to lead, the duty and responsibility on him and him alone which is the worry. This is a common trait in old school leadership. Leaders who believe too much in themselves and not enough in others. People who believe it is uniquely them who were 'born to rule'.
In an older, more linear and predictable world, a world that was more machine like, this kind of all-seeing and all-knowing leadership was at least feasible. But in a more fragmented and chaotic world a different style of leadership is needed.
We're still between the old and the new and morbid symptoms are obviously appearing. As leaders inevitably fail to fix the complex chaotic and fast-moving world around them, trust in politics diminishes. Traditional political leaders respond by promising to deliver even more onerous targets. It is a doom-loop.
But instead of going forward to more plural and open forms of leadership, we seem to be going backwards from paternalistic politicians to more authoritarian ones.
Labour Apart: How Morgan McSweeney Levered the Left Out of Power
The story of how Keir Starmer's chief adviser hoodwinked Labour party members tells us a lot about how power really works, argues Neal Lawson
Neal Lawson
Instead of an adult-to-adult relationship, we are reverting to the relationship we know and understand best, that of the parent and child. This is the battle to come, between the strongma
Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
It's hard in modern politics not to think constantly about leadership. It's little wonder. Traditional politics feels incapable of dealing with the complexities and the sheer scale of the challenges we face. So, we look to roll the dice, again and again, to find a leader capable of leading us. What we don't do is stop and reconceptualise the nature of leadership in the 21st century.
I was reminded of this while reading Tom McTague's recent profile of Keir Starmer, in his first outing as editor of the New Statesman.
I came away feeling slightly more sympathetic to Starmer but not really in a good way, more sorrow and sadness than warmth or regard. Starmer, as his handling of the welfare rebellion inside Labour has shown, is simply out of his depth, trying to fix our fiendishly complex problems for us.
An Island of Neighbours: Rebuilding Labour from the Ground-Up
Clementine Boucher and Luke Hurst, of the cross-party think tank Compass, share practical insights from its conference in London in May, focusing on how a 'decade of radical renewal' can become a reality
Clementine Boucher and Luke Hurst
In the interviews for the profile, Starmer talks about the responsibility he feels to always step up and organise those around him. At one level such a trait is admirable, the sense of public service in Starmer feels almost profound.
But it's the sense of his own uniqueness to lead, the duty and responsibility on him and him alone which is the worry. This is a common trait in old school leadership. Leaders who believe too much in themselves and not enough in others. People who believe it is uniquely them who were 'born to rule'.
In an older, more linear and predictable world, a world that was more machine like, this kind of all-seeing and all-knowing leadership was at least feasible. But in a more fragmented and chaotic world a different style of leadership is needed.
We're still between the old and the new and morbid symptoms are obviously appearing. As leaders inevitably fail to fix the complex chaotic and fast-moving world around them, trust in politics diminishes. Traditional political leaders respond by promising to deliver even more onerous targets. It is a doom-loop.
But instead of going forward to more plural and open forms of leadership, we seem to be going backwards from paternalistic politicians to more authoritarian ones.
Labour Apart: How Morgan McSweeney Levered the Left Out of Power
The story of how Keir Starmer's chief adviser hoodwinked Labour party members tells us a lot about how power really works, argues Neal Lawson
Neal Lawson
Instead of an adult-to-adult relationship, we are reverting to the relationship we know and understand best, that of the parent and child. This is the battle to come, between the strongma
Activity