After Gray’s departure, it is all on Starmer

Keir Starmer has reshuffled his top team. Credit: PA

The late Derek Draper wrote a breathlessly excitable and celebratory book about Tony Blair’s frantically busy first 100 days as prime minister.

Sir Keir Starmer by contrast is keen to move on from the internal contradictions of his first 100 days.In replacing Sue Gray as chief of staff by Morgan McSweeney, he is of course reminding everyone that he is the organ grinder - that any chief of staff is definitionally the monkey.In other words, if after the budget on October 30, it is still not easy to answer the exam question: “What is the point of Labour?”, it is the effectiveness of himself and his whole government that would be widely doubted.This is not a government that can fall, given the size of the majority. But it can fail.

Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.

Have you heard our podcast Talking Politics? Tom, Robert and Anushka dig into the biggest issues dominating the political agenda in every episode…