Keir Starmer’s No10 reshuffle must provide coherence and clarity

Darren Jones clearly enjoyed being chief secretary to the Treasury so much that he kept half his old title when moving to a new No10 job. The government has never had a “chief secretary to the prime minister” before and Jones and his colleagues will need to work quickly to define the role. That will be essential to make the most of the changes and avoid the confused lines of decision-making and accountability that have characterised this and too many previous governments.

Jones, who navigated a ferociously difficult spending review at the Treasury, is a good appointment. His last job gave him insight into departments across the government as well as the Treasury. He is also a minister on the up, a strong media performer, and has – so far at least – passed the essential ministerial test of combining administrative skill with political nous. The prime minister needs him to bring that governing craft to No10.

A senior political figure to drive the government’s work is welcome

Success is not guaranteed. When Boris Johnson tried a similar move, bringing Steve Barclay in as a minister in No10, it did not go well. Confused remits and the fact that Barclay was asked to straddle both a chief of staff job and a Cabinet Office role set him up to fail. So, it is a positive move that Jones has one job, in No10, unambiguously working to drive the government’s agenda from the centre.

Last spring, the IfG’s Commission on the Centre of Government called for prime ministers to appoint a “first secretary”. This “senior minister, with ownership of the government’s policy programme”, would “work closely with the chancellor to manage tensions between the government’s fiscal objectives and the rest of the government’s agenda” as well as taking on other responsibilities according to the needs of the prime minister. Jones’s new “chief secretary” role looks a lot like our proposed model, and is a welcome development.

A functional No10 relies on well-defined roles and teamwork

However, Jones will fall short if the No10 organisation remains confused. Everyone inside the building needs to understand the new organisation chart. Which teams in No10 and the Cabinet Office work to Jones? Which political appointees report to him? And is it clear to the rest of government who authoritatively speaks for the prime minister on each issue? One of the problems the reorganisation needs to solve is that too many people have been purporting to speak for the prime minister on policy. 

The existing chief of staff and the new chief secretary will need to work seamlessly alongside each other. Jones’s role inevitably encroaches on some of Morgan McSweeney’s territory, who now presumably focuses on the political story the government wants to tell while Jones leads for Starmer on policy and delivery. But the different functions, and individuals, will need to dovetail and keep their disagreements constructive and private. Any signs of a power struggle should ring immediate warning bells for the prime minister.

The Jones appointment also has consequences for senior Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden, who had been leading on missions and “supporting delivery of government’s priorities”. He will need to settle into the new structure and – hopefully – will now have time and energy to prioritise the reforms to the civil service and public sector that the government has identified are needed. The danger here is that McFadden moves on or loses interest, and this essential work lies moribund.

Starmer is making a variety of other changes to his close team. Minouche Shafik brings a welcome strengthening of the No10 economics operation, to act as “a heavyweight adviser to the prime minister”, as our Centre Commission recommended. Treasury recruit Dan York-Smith, as Starmer’s new principal private secretary, brings more know-how about how to get the most out of the essential prime minister-chancellor relationship.

Inevitably some staff will lose out and are being moved on or dismissed. The key here is that ‘soft-landing jobs’ created to help people save face do not lead to duplication, make-work teams or continue the current confusion. If someone is on the way out, the political and civil service leadership needs to be honest with them and ensure the move is managed in a respectful but firm way.

There is more work to be done to sort out the structures at the centre

To move a chief secretary from the Treasury to No10 is a big call for the prime minister, and he will need to show that this novel arrangement can work. But even if it does, it will not be enough. As the IfG Commission on the Centre also recommended, structural changes to the civil service and to departments will be needed.

The Commission concluded that neither No10 nor the Cabinet Office are fit to serve a modern prime minister. The Cabinet Office has lost its way, and No10 does not have the strategic clarity to support a prime minister who must more than ever be the chief executive of government. The logical next step is to create a new department of the prime minister and cabinet and a separate department for the civil service. Darren Jones could lead the former and Pat McFadden the latter.

That would also create an opportunity to rationalise the top of the civil service by separating the role of cabinet secretary from the head of the civil service. The cabinet secretary would then work hand-in-glove with Darren Jones to advise on and implement the government’s programme and lead the prime minister’s department, while the head of the civil service would be accountable for the reforms to that institution that are so badly needed.

In its short life the Starmer government has already had too many resets. The prime minister needs to make this one count.