‘100 Days Later...’ - The question is whether a reset will be enough or just more noise to add to the mix
The story around Sue Gray, Keir Starmer's new chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and the general sense that the government needs to "get a grip" over its internal SpAd wars is, of course, absolute drivel.
Few likely understand the in’s and out’s of what’s going on, and even fewer care. It’s about “as Westminster bubble a story as you can get” and yet it commanded the front pages of at least six national newspapers as though, for that point in time at the beginning of this week, it was the most important thing the voting public needed to know about.
They didn’t.
At least not really.
Once again, the “scumbag journalists” (as Gray supposedly called them) in the media grabbed hold of a tedious, irksome and mostly inconsequential story, and the point is that it’s perceived to become a distraction for the government when other things are obviously of far greater concern to the public.
The outcome is that when the government is seen to be distracted by the issue, the public responds disapprovingly.
Labour are partly to blame for this - and it’s because they insist on being ‘boring’. ‘Boring’ is good - for technocratic governments who desire to focus on ‘what really matters’ - but ‘boring’ can also be bad, because in that ‘boring’ a vacuum is created, and in that vacuum comes ‘mostly inconsequential’ stories like Sue Gray’s departure.
One of the problems, of course, is the fact that very few seem that intrigued by the Labour government in the first place. As a result, when stories like this emerge, they have an obvious knock-on effect on public approval when, to be fair to Labour, they haven't actually done too badly in their first 100 days in office [see: “strangely and unusually”] if voters took the time to notice.
The ‘100 days’ thing in itself is a non sequitur, however.
Labour - if one is to be pedantic - haven't actually had 100 days in office and the metric is unfair because of the sheer amount of recess that ministers have had that have prevented them from progressing with key legislation. The actual number of days Labour have been in power - ie. with ‘the power’ to legislate - is probably around the half of that.
This, it could be argued, was a key component behind why the Conservatives called the election when they did in the first place: why, if you know you're going to be in opposition as all of the polls predicted, would you allow the incoming party to get off to a head start with their ‘agenda’?
In the world of politics, it made sense to be as spiteful as the Conservatives could be given the time they had left in power - it’s this legacy thing that Labour keep going on about.
The story around Sue Gray’s departure, on the other hand, is not a Conservative problem or even part of their legacy. It's a Labour problem that has evolved from the vacuum of slo-burn political operations that, above all else, shows a complacency at the heart of government that underestimates the impatience of voters and the power of the media.
What’s the government’s answer?
Well -