Rearranging his team may provide Sir Keir with a comforting sense that a corner is being turned, but the fact that he has been forced into a reset just 100 days into his premiership tells us much about his own poor judgement. Nothing encapsulates this core political defect more than Starmer’s mishandling of the donors issue. The smug and dismissive attitude with which he and his Cabinet attempted to downplay and dismiss the accusations as they began making headlines ahead of the Labour Party conference a fortnight ago was truly a sight to behold. The brazen attempt to recast their freeloading as somehow virtuous, and the growing anger as misplaced tittle-tattle, offered clear signs that power had already begun its corruptive process. And the story of politics being awash with private wealth won’t go away no matter how much Morgan McSweeney wants it to, because this is the story of politics in Britain — and it has been for decades.

The idea that moguls and big business expect nothing in return for their “kindness” is an insult to the intelligence of any reasonable person. Aristotle warned us about this long ago. The ancient practice of corrupting political hearts with flattering gifts is nothing new, and it is effective precisely because it feels harmless to those being lavished with special attention for the first time. But if donors aren’t in it for a political favour somewhere down the line, then why are nurses, GPs, teachers, police and firefighters — arguably far worthier of such generosity — not permanently inundated with gifts? Surely terminally ill children or destitute single mothers fleeing domestic abuse could do with a night out at a Taylor Swift gig. What is it about people in power which so effortlessly elicits the boundless generosity of the wealthy — if not some form of self-interest?

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The tedious line they have attempted to spin over the course of the scandal — that this conduct falls “within the rules” — is another major insult. There was a time when claiming back the cost of a duck-moat was well within the rules for an MP. Sir Fred Goodwin acted within the rules of the financial sector when he crashed the UK economy from the comfort of his personal scallop kitchen at RBS headquarters in 2008. Indeed, one of the most infuriating aspects of the past 14 years of Tory government has been that almost every moral and ethical crime collectively committed — whether dishing out billions to their pals in contracts, crashing the economy with tax cuts, or immiserating tens of thousands of sick, vulnerable and disabled people through callous welfare reforms — fell well within the rules.

Most politicians don’t just wake up one day and decide to use public office to enrich themselves; entitlement develops incrementally and begins with the seductive idea that you’re a little bit special. One day it’s Taylor Swift concert tickets, the next you’re telling porkies to the Queen. Accepting gifts is not immoral in and of itself, but this is how the culture of corruption (which Sir Keir Starmer claims he sought power to rip out of public life) slowly seduces those of low character. The issue for most people is not whether the behaviour of politicians falls within the rules but that the political class is governed by one set of rules while everyone else is governed by another.

Funnily enough, most other public servants are forbidden from accepting gifts or donations because it is well understood that doing so leaves the system open to abuse. Yet somehow, politicians are ostensibly free to party like it’s 2099 provided they fill out a little form declaring what infuriating hypocrites they are.

Furthermore, government ministers are already some of the highest paid and most powerful people in the country. They already get their food, travel, heating, housing, petrol, pens and paperclips paid for or heavily subsidised. The argument that complimentary hospitality and freebies are a genuine necessity that allow them to do their jobs better is yet more evidence of how endemic corporate influence in politics has become and how adjusted to it politicians in the UK are. The great irony of this scandal is that Starmer’s Cabinet has shown more collective enthusiasm, conviction and clarity of purpose trying to justify their brazen sense of entitlement to corporate welfare than they have on any other issue. Perhaps instead of smugly laughing off legitimate anger at their behaviour, they might better use their energy confronting the moral dissonance which now characterises their young political project.

This dissonance has characterised every one of Starmer’s first 100 days in office. On the Middle East, he seemed more sincere mocking the delegate who spoke up for Palestinian children during his conference speech than he did when calling for an immediate ceasefire. On the riots, he rightly condemned far-Right thuggery and racism before flying out to Italy to copy the immigration homework of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. And given the sheer level of corporate welfare the Labour Cabinet have been helping themselves to, Starmer’s renewed commitment to tackling benefits fraudsters takes on new Iannuccian proportions. It all further demonstrates the ideological contradictions at the core of his “remade” Labour Party. These contradictions are perhaps best typified by his seeming ability to leverage his political privilege for personal gain, while looking the country in the eye and pontificating about the merits of public service.

As centrist dads the country over cling to the delusion that beneath Sir Keir’s floundering political appearance, there lurks a high-minded, icy tactician, the shambles tell a more damning truth about his skills. Evidently, there are some things money can’t buy.

The Prime Minister’s decision to replace Gray so soon into his — and her— time in government is part of a ruthless reordering of his inner circle intended to create a tighter and fundamentally more political team than the one that has overseen the calamity of his first 100 days in charge.

Gray has some reasons to feel hard-done by. She is not the first chief of staff to find the job impossible, accused of hoarding power and blocking access. But the level of animosity towards her from within Downing Street is unique at this stage in a new government. She has fallen out with aides, become the centre of a political storm and failed to protect the Prime Minister from the fall out. “It has been the worst start to any government in recent history with the exception of Liz Truss,” as one senior Labour figure put it to me with exasperation.

Most important of all, however, is the fact that she went for McSweeney and missed — and now he has her job. Instead of ensuring McSweeney was at the centre of everything, as he was in opposition, Gray attempted to sideline his entire political operation in favour of a more technocratic administration that she was in charge of. In doing so, however, she lost control of No.10 and the Government appeared devoid of any purpose or direction. It was a disaster.

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As a result, Gray finds herself dramatically demoted to “the Prime Minister’s envoy for the regions and nations”. McSweeney, meanwhile, has been promoted, with two new deputy chiefs of staff reporting to him — the former political director, Vidhya Alakeson, and director of government relations, Jill Cuthbertson. In another significant move, the former Daily Mirror and Sunday Times journalist, James Lyons, will join to lead a new “strategic communications team”, in what is effectively a demotion for the current director of communications, Matthew Doyle. This is now McSweeney’s No.10.

But this can only be the start of the internal revolution. Starmer must follow it up with a cascade of other appointments, starting with a new cabinet secretary alongside McSweeney, as well as a new principal private secretary, national security adviser and ambassador to Washington. But for this to work, they all need to know what he wants — and this is where McSweeney comes in.

While Starmer claimed yesterday’s changes were made to “strengthen his Downing Street operation ahead of marking his first 100 days in office”, they are an implicit admission that a reset was needed. There cannot be two rival centres of power within Downing Street, working in separate parts of the building, with separate instincts and ideas. Starmer finally realised this.

It may seem trite but the fact that Gray and McSweeney were not even working in the same room is important. Since moving into No.10, Starmer has taken the same office used by most recent prime ministers, a relatively small office at the back of the building accessible through a larger room where all the Prime Minister’s most important officials tend to sit. This in turn is on a corridor which connects Downing Street to the Cabinet Office via something called “the link door”. The reason most prime ministers have worked here is because they can have all their most trusted aides at hand and the cabinet secretary is just a short walk away. But until now, McSweeney sat somewhere else entirely.

Unlike Gray, who did sit directly outside Starmer’s office, McSweeney and his team worked out of a room at the front of No. 10 near to the front door. To reach McSweeney — Starmer’s longest serving and most important aide — the PM had to walk out of his office, past Gray and her team, down the main corridor of the building and into McSweeney’s office. Such small details matter. As anyone who has ever worked in No.10 understands: proximity is power.

Those inside Starmer’s No.10 liked to argue that proximity mattered less under him because of how he worked. Every week, time was set aside for him and McSweeney to see each other. And besides, Starmer had developed a habit of taking his work upstairs into the Thatcher room, where he would read through Government papers on the sofa. Starmer, then, was a roving Prime Minister who liked to use more of the building than his predecessors, which meant it wasn’t quite so easy to ensure proximity. This was the argument until yesterday; and it was bogus.

It was always clear that the physical incoherence of this operation reflected its wider strategic incoherence. The Starmer government has yet to find its animating purpose; its all-encompassing mission to which all other priorities must, in the end, be subordinated. It has missions — plural — and they are all perfectly reasonable, but they don’t have one organising principle.

The best way to understand the extraordinary disharmony within Starmer’s government, then, is to know that it wasn’t a battle for personalities, but a proxy war for control of the Starmer project; a battle to define what it was that they were elected to do. That job now falls to McSweeney.

To some of his critics, he is a ruthless Machiavelli who conned the Labour Party into electing a leader far to the Right of the one they thought they were getting. To others, he is a genius puppeteer who guided his uncharismatic frontman to a landslide election victory by pulling all the right strings. The fact that he has clearly won his Cold War with Gray will add further colour to the McSweeney myth. It is certainly true that without ever having a cross word with her, he has ensured that he has emerged on top and not her. To achieve this, he bided his time and consulted those he could trust to understand how he could ensure his influence was felt. In the end, though, it is his personal relationship with Starmer which has ensured he triumphed. He has the Prime Minister’s trust..

The truth is McSweeney is not Thomas Cromwell reincarnate. He has obvious weaknesses, especially for someone who must now manage the Whitehall machine. He remains new to national political power and naive to some of Whitehall’s eccentricities (though, evidently, not that naive). Some of his biggest supporters also worry that his quiet, unassuming nature and lack of “natural authority” — read public school bravado — puts him at a disadvantage in a system which still expects such traits. He will need to learn quickly how to impose his authority.

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What McSweeney really offers is a hard-headed, unromantic clarity about Labour’s purpose that is more reminiscent of the party’s tougher social democratic past than its softer liberal present. He — more than Starmer — is someone who would be instantly recognisable to any figure from the old Labour Right, from Ernest Bevin to John Reid but is a rarer sight in Westminster of late. He did not learn his politics at Oxford and the bar, but on council estates working for local government. This experience has given him an instinctive loathing for the kind of badge-wearing politics of virtue the Labour Right has long associated with the middle-class Left.

McSweeney sees the purpose of Labour in straightforward, class terms: to represent in government the interests of ordinary people who are not otherwise looked after by their employers, landlords — or, indeed, politicians. He holds those officials who failed to protect the working-class girls of Rochdale in particular contempt. Unlike many in the party, this idea of purpose also combines with an instinctive sympathy for the attitudes and instincts of their voters and those McSweeney believes should be Labour voters.

The upshot of all this is a naturally blue Labour instinct that borrows the language and feelings of conservatism to pursue an older class-based politics. Rather than being some kind of re-run of Blairism, this is a politics more deeply rooted in Labour’s past. In the run up to the 1979 election, before the Winter of Discontent blew James Callaghan off course, that grand figure of the Tory Right, Maurice Cowling, complained that Margaret Thatcher was losing the political battle against the Labour prime minister because he appeared and sounded in every respect a more reassuring conservative presence than her. The challenge for McSweeney is to convince the Labour Party to follow his lead when it does not feel his politics in the way that he does.

There are two areas in particular where McSweeney and his team’s instinctively conservative understanding of Britain has shone through and will define much of this Government’s record: welfare and immigration. The Labour Party is united in its opposition to the two-child benefit cap based on the straightforwardly moral argument that it increases child poverty. But McSweeney’s team also know that this is the one area where the Labour Party is most at odds with the country overall: there is overwhelming support among every cohort and group based on the entirely different moral principle that you shouldn’t have children if you can’t afford them. It is an important early marker of this government that, when forced to choose, it has decided not to argue with the public.

On the second issue, immigration, there is a clear understanding within the group close to McSweeney in government that only by making the argument for reducing the numbers and being seen to have achieved a significant reduction can they hope to be reelected. That Starmer chose to adopt the language of “love of home”, rather than “hatred of neighbour”, when defending his commitment to reducing migration in his party conference speech is another important signal of the possible future direction of this government should it, over time, start to become more “McSweenyite” in flavour.

Until now, however, the reality is that this government has lacked any real coherent narrative about its purpose, intent, mandate or strategy. It has not been blue Labour in the way Blair’s government remained distinctly new in its opening few years. Fast-tracking assisted dying, freeing prisoners early from their sentences and closing down blast furnaces as part of a green revolution are not the instincts of conservative social democracy — it’s soft Left Fabianism.

Instead, the country has been treated to a mush of different policies and declarations. One day Rachel Reeves declares the Government’s central purpose to balance the books, as if she were George Osborne, while at the same time handing out pay rises across the public sector. But nobody thinks the purpose of the Labour Party is to control public spending. This may be something that has to be done, but only as part of a longer term aspiration to achieve something else.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher’s central purpose was to save the British economy. This was part of a wider struggle for free markets and liberty — against socialism at home and communism abroad. In 1997, Blair’s central purpose was to save public services by increasing investment and opening them up to the kind of choice he believed would permanently lock in the middle classes. Like Thatcher, this domestic purpose was also tied into a wider “third way” internationalism, in which Britain would lead Europe into its future.

A cynic might point out — reasonably — that neither government was particularly successful in its missions. Thatcher’s economic record is one of solid, if not spectacular, economic growth bookended by two deep recessions. Blair, meanwhile, saw a marked improvement in public services, but one that was ultimately dependent on an economy that, it turned out, was fundamentally broken. Internationally, meanwhile, Thatcher left office as one of the victors of Cold War, but also one who had become an “ineffective brake” trying to stop German unification and the European single currency which flowed from that. Blair, in contrast, left office with two of his wars still raging, the British army effectively beaten in both Basra and Helmand.

Politics, though, is hard and ultimately ends in failure. The point about the premierships of Blair and Thatcher — and, to a certain extent, David Cameron’s — was that they were successful in taking control of the political narrative, offering a diagnosis of what was wrong with the country and showing how they would put it right. In each case, there was a clarity of purpose. Today, there is no such thing, but there needs to be. By sacking Sue Gray Starmer has made the necessary first step. Now he needs to let McSweeney take control. And this time it has to work.

While there is an understandable instinct to downplay the accounts of Downing Street infighting over who gets paid what and who sits where, on this occasion, the reality is worse than the briefings. Inside No.10 the atmosphere is grim: factious, paranoid and — crucially — un-led. The briefings pouring out are not merely froth, but the scum on the surface caused by the panicked churn of an unprepared government underneath. The scale of the disharmony is unprecedented so soon.

Some of the unhappiness is residual from opposition, when a sense of distrust seeped into Labour HQ as Gray attempted to assert more control in preparation for government. The smallest hint of a negative briefing would throw the operation into panic: fingers would be pointed, information withheld and the circle around Starmer tightened. Loyal Labour aides suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of an invisible divide. They resented it — and the person they blamed for building it. Yet there was still a collective mission binding them together: victory.

Since entering government, the situation has deteriorated with extraordinary speed. And rather than dreaming big thoughts about how it will succeed where others failed, No.10 is already drifting acrimoniously into the kind of cynical weariness usually associated with a second term government.

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Part of the story is certainly political: Labour’s grim inheritance has forced it to face the kind of “difficult decisions” few in the party want to impose. And the smell of cronyism following the huge donations from the millionaire peer, Waheed Alli, has also been dispiriting. But speaking to those who have witnessed the disorder within No.10, even this account glosses over the scale of the problems affecting the Starmer operation.

Whether Sue Gray is paid a few thousand pounds more than the Prime Minister or a few thousand pounds less does not change the structural challenges facing Britain, which remain extraordinary in their scale and depth. Tackling these requires a government united behind a coherent strategy with capable individuals supported by a system that can deliver what is necessary. Little of that exists at the moment. Those I spoke to told me there was a startling lack of togetherness in the team around Starmer. Each of the main figures close to him — Sue Gray, Chief of Staff; Matthew Doyle, communications director; Morgan McSweeney, campaign director; and Vidhya Alakeson, political director — are impressive, but they are not a band of brothers who have each other’s back. Instead, they reflect a group of individuals, united by their personal loyalty to the Prime Minister more than the coherence of their politics.

In this respect, Starmer’s Downing Street operation has an uncanny resemblance to Boris Johnson’s, which operated more as a court, in which the inhabitants jostled for position in front of the king. It should be a political project with a burning mission. The nagging worry today is that there is a similarly gaping ideological hole in the centre of the Labour project as there was with Johnsons. 

True, the party was disciplined in opposition, pursuing its mission to move away from the Left with remarkable success. But such was the extent of this challenge, that it dominated the Starmer project. It was the Starmer project. To win power, the party had to show the electorate it had changed; to do so, it had to make the difficult decisions it made on spending, welfare, antisemitism and candidate selection. But did they ever come up with a coherent project for government itself? If so, it has not yet emerged.

“There’s more than an element of ‘catastrophic success’ about it all,” as one official put it to me, a reference to the calamitous consequences of America’s victory in the 2003 Iraq war. Before the invasion it was widely expected that the Iraqi Republican Guard would put up a dogged fight in defence of their leader. But when the battle came, much like the Tories at the last general election, they deserted the field. In the initial euphoria of the American advance, a corporal clambered upon the giant statue of Saddam Hussein in the middle of Baghdad and hung the Stars and Stripes. It was “mission accomplished”. The statue was toppled and with it, the old regime. But then came the looting, anarchy and, eventually, civil war as the country was sucked into a vacuum of authority that had been opened up by the invasion. The Americans had won, but did not know what to do.

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Similarly, Labour were not supposed to win this big, this quickly. But they did and now they have to figure out what they are in government to do, and who will do it.

“The problem is that you’ve got a whole lot of people without a leader,” one senior party figure told me. “No-one is in charge.” Stories are leaking out of meetings packed with the smartest brains in the operation but no decisions being taken because there is no leader. Morgan McSweeney, the man who masterminded Starmer’s rise to the premiership, is not as powerful inside the government as he was outside. There are now rival centres of power: Sue Gray, the gatekeeper of the system; the government machine itself; and, of course, the departments.

Much of the blame for the dysfunction in No.10 has, so far, focused on Gray. She has been compared by various people to Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall, dominating through proximity to power and her reputation as a Whitehall fixer. She is, one senior Labour figure told me, “the  last person to whisper in Keir’s ear”. Another said she was “the most political person I’ve ever met”. Among McSweeney’s supporters, there is a concern that he is losing a quiet battle for supremacy with Gray who is using her decades of experience at the heart of government to assert control. McSweeney in contrast is having to learn on the job.

Gray has certainly become the most important cog in the Downing Street machine: Starmer’s eyes and ears, translating his instructions to the system, and the system’s recommendations to him. With Simon Case sidelined, she is acting as more than simply a chief of staff. Many I spoke to said she simply cannot do everything she is trying to do. The system is buckling under her attempt to try. Yet those people also said it was too easy to blame Gray. “There are problems with Sue, of course,” one figure told me, “but the central problem is that people don’t really know what Keir wants.” 

And here is the real problem at the heart of the government chaos. A prime minister’s chief of staff is only as powerful as they are allowed to be. Starmer is unusual as a Prime Minister in his lack of political experience, and therefore has tended to rely and follow his advisers in a way Blair or Brown did not. In opposition, McSweeney was central to every major strategic decision. In government he must share this with Gray. Yet, it is far from clear that Gray shares McSweeney’s deepest instincts, which are far more attuned to the conservative feelings of the country on questions of migration, welfare, criminal justice and patriotism than any member of the Government — and, indeed, the Prime Minister.

The nagging worry from those sympathetic to McSweeney’s attempts to refashion Labour as a more provincial, national party of government — as opposed to the liberal wing of middle-class England — is that he is battling forces too powerful for him to overcome: the instincts of the parliamentary party, Whitehall and Starmer himself. So far, the Labour Party has authorised a mass release of prisoners, cut pensioner benefits and accepted the closure of Scotland’s last oil refinery. None of these evidence points suggests a strategic shift to a new, “blue” Labourism intent on ending decades of stale consensus. 

All of this makes this week’s Labour Party conference in Liverpool particularly important. No longer a great celebration of victory, as Tony Blair’s first conference as prime minister was seen in 1997, but a gathering to define the purpose of the government and with it, finally, impose some order and authority over the warring operation that is supposed to be in charge. 

There is a concerning warning for what happens when such briefing wars run out of control: Boris Johnson. When the briefings started against Dominic Cummings, it was long before they spread throughout the government. Labour has been warned.

This government is drifting and those inside the engine room know it. It is absurd that after two months we should be talking about a reset, but that is what is required. A government must pull in the same direction, bound together in the belief that the pain of the voyage will be worth it. Right now they just seem lost and mutinous.