Tag Archives: Kier Starmer

There is something corrosive happening in British politics. Not in any single policy decision, nor in any one government department, but in the way governing itself now seems to unfold with these latest U-turns. U-turns are not, in themselves, a sign of bad government. Sometimes they reflect learning, listening, or legitimate correction. But when reversals become habitual and almost ritual; they point to a more serious problem: a politics that has lost confidence in its own ability to persuade.

This provokes a very deep question: Are we becoming ungovernable?

In a country that feels increasingly fractious, and perhaps voters that might something you’d hear from a “Yes, Minister” episode ‘unreasonable’—but I think more broadly it comes down to this; politics has lost the art to argue, persuade, and inform.

With the latest U-turn on ID cards on top of the recent U-turn on business rates on pubs and then on the farmers tax; all policies I am glad they amended or dropped; much ink has been spilt on describing Starmerism as managerialism politics with seemingly lost the capacity to manage. Managerial politics, at least in its classic European technocratic sense, while yes technocratic all involved something crucial: the willingness to stick with unpopular decisions under the claim—sometimes arrogant, sometimes justified—that the experts knew best and benefits would follow in time.

Seeming here in the UK, we see not a technocracy but a politics hollowed out by hyper-responsiveness. A governing style so attuned to opinion polls, and social media sentiment that it has lost any sense of anchor. Policy announced, floated by rough seas of public reception, before immediately being parachuted out before the ship sailed—less like a programme for government and more like A/B test.