This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter for subscribers.
There is a skill modern British Prime Ministers need above all else if they want to stay in post and accomplish anything which endures. Yes, of course, they have to be a hard worker, because the job is relentless, and they must also be ruthless when it comes to dealing with their enemies and their friends too. They need one eye for internal party management and another for communication with the country. Beliefs, determination and a coherent world view help, and the very best usually have all this and more. But it is never enough if they lack the key thing, the defining characteristic.
It is this. A successful Prime Minister has to be capable of learning, at speed, and becoming better at it as they go. The greats develop and improve, until usually after five, six or seven years or so in office the process runs its course and the public or their colleagues turn on them and it is over. Before that, if they enjoy some luck, the Prime Minister who can learn and improve has a shot at doing something meaningful.
Does Sir Keir Starmer have it? We are about to find out.
Margaret Thatcher obviously had it, in spades. Indeed, in opposition she was obsessed by self-improvement and hungry for new ideas, new pamphlets and better ways to communicate. Time and again in her pomp in office she developed and adapted. In foreign policy she became a category A stateswoman despite having had no academic or ministerial training for it.
Thatcher had it until 1986, when she narrowly survived the Westland scandal and in the aftermath perhaps began to feel untouchable. After her 1987 election result she began going backwards and her strength became a counter productive rigidity. Hubris was followed by nemesis.
Did Tony Blair have it? Historians will be debating this for… oh, probably not that long, because although the Blair era seemed historically very significant at the time, it only seemed that way because it was shiny and exciting, if you were a fan, and vulgar and appalling if you were not a fan.
The constitutional vandalism of the period – the lawyerfication of everything – was historically very significant, of course, because it was at odds with our previous system of law and constitutional evolution developed since at least the Reformation.
This central element of the late 1990s legal revolution will take a while to undo or repair, although that will probably have to wait for the next iteration of the British state. Whether it comes via a splintering of Labour, or a government with Reform as the largest party or more likely a coalition partner for someone, or a Tory recovery, I suspect we are heading for an administration that will rip up judicial activism and move beyond the ECHR.
That aside, as it becomes more distant the Blair era looks increasingly like a mere mid-point in the journey between post-Cold War globalisation and its end – now. The period now ending started in the late 1980s when the Soviet Union creaked and China tentatively opened up. Today, we are moving back from an open world to a dangerously closed world, or a (dread word) multipolarity of competing spheres of interest.
Even the open, global monetary system we depend on, in Britain in particular, may go. After 1973 and the end of the US run post-War Bretton Woods system, it became all about opening up capital flows so money could pour across borders. Technology sped up the process at a dizzying pace. Now, it appears, Trump’s advisers have a plan to put the barriers back up. Capital flowing into the US may be heavily taxed for the privilege. Again, so much of what we thought we knew, what seemed solid, is being evaporated as history turns.
Incidentally, I do not mean to dismiss Blair, although there will be readers who do just that. He clearly did learn and develop, most notably when it came to markets and the power of choice. Having begun with little to no understanding of these great forces, he adapted on a “what works” basis and became a great advocate of liberalisation in education and through the academies programme the instigator of a remarkable improvement in the lives of millions of pupils that was continued by ministers in the coalition . Blair’s ability to learn, to challenge his prior assumptions and to develop had a practical benefit.
Theresa May did not have it.
Most obviously, and ridiculously, Liz Truss did not have it either. In office, her brain was incapable of developing beyond a cartoon level understanding of the 1980s leading her to think that if Thatcher was strong and Truss played strong then she would be like Thatcher. Er, no. In the gamble of the emergency budget in 2022 her lack of historical curiosity combined with her wildness of character to produce a mad experiment – Reaganism without the dollar. The US President in the 1980s could broadly do as he liked on spending and taxation because he had the dollar, the world’s reserve currency, and the markets would suck it up. Alas, this was Britain in the 2020s and the markets were under no compulsion to cooperate.
Rapidly, it became clear Liz Truss did not have it.
Does Sir Keir Starmer have it?
Until the inauguration of Donald Trump, it looked like the answer was no, not really, or at least not enough. The Prime Minister appeared to be an enigma, a ghostly figure who had got to the highest office almost by accident.