How to run your Cabinet: Lessons for Starmer

With tensions simmering in Keir Starmer’s top team over Labour’s approach to the economy, this week host Patrick Baker looks at what the PM might be able to learn about managing your ministers from past Cabinets and examines Starmer's own leadership style.

David Owen, former foreign secretary under Jim Callaghan, recounts the IMF crisis in 1976 as an example of Cabinet government at its most effective.

Michael Cockerell, the legendary political documentary-maker, describes how Margaret Thatcher and John Major approached their Cabinets and how, despite their contrasting styles, both were undone by their Cabinet ministers in the end.

Clare Short, who resigned as Tony Blair’s international development secretary over the war in Iraq, argues Blair sidelined the Cabinet as a decision-making body from the beginning of his premiership, preferring instead to rely on a small coterie of advisers or what became known as ‘sofa government’.

Cleo Watson, Boris Johnson’s former deputy chief of staff, takes us through the Cabinet dynamics of the Johnson era and how Chief Adviser Dominic Cummings saw Cabinet as a rubber-stamping exercise, rather than where the real decisions of government would be taken.

Sonia Khan, former adviser to ex-Chancellor Sajid Javid, says ministers often had to linger by the toilet or attend social gatherings to have any chance of influencing Boris Johnson.

Luke Sullivan, Keir Starmer’s political director while in opposition, says the prime minister likes to let his cabinet ministers get on with their jobs and to solve problems before they reach his desk.

And Patrick Maguire, political columnist at The Times and author of ‘Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer’ delves into the curious dynamics of this current Labour Cabinet and explains how Keir Starmer’s leadership style might create a vacuum for others to fill.

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