David Blunkett: ‘Kids in Downing Street’ to blame for Labour’s current failures

Read time: 5 mins

In brief…

• Lord Blunkett tells Jon Sopel that “kids in Downing Street”, telling MPs how to do their jobs is doing damage to the Labour Party, and that Keir Starmer needs to re-work his team to lead a successful government.
• The government, Blunkett says, is “lighting its own fires” and that the only person who will win if Labour fails is Nigel Farage.
• He insists Keir Starmer has had some success as Prime Minister, largely on overseas affairs, but says he must now focus his attention on the problems at home.

What’s the story?

Lord David Blunkett has called on Keir Starmer to end a culture of “kids in Downing Street” telling MPs what they should be doing.

The former Home Secretary, who served in Tony Blair’s Labour government between 1997 and 2005, spoke to The News Agents during a tumultuous week for Keir Labour, where briefings, counter-briefings and a whole lot of finger-pointing has resulted in a series of unfortunate headlines for Keir Starmer.

Earlier this week, Labour insiders – believed to be inside 10 Downing Street – told journalists that Home Secretary Wes Streeting may have been considering a challenge to Starmer’s leadership, believed to have been an attempt to shut-down any such bid before it began.

Streeting has denied these claims, and Starmer himself has said he has “never authorised” attacks on his own MPs.

“When anybody rang me up from Downing Street, or a private secretary said, 'Downing Street doesn't like this', my answer was, who?” Blunkett tells Jon Sopel.

“There isn't a Downing Street, there are individuals. Do they know more than I knew? Were they cleverer than me? Did they have more political nous than I had?

“Well, actually, I was arrogant to believe that they didn't. So I used to ring Tony and say, Is this your will, or has somebody misinterpreted it? And I'd normally get the answer; 'get on with it’.”

The name most-commonly mentioned in Labour leader challenge conversations over the past week has been Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff and prime suspect (for many) for the Streeting briefing.

Blunkett says Sweeney was extremely useful in building a team for Starmer before the 2024 election, but is not suited for his current position.

“Now's the time for the Prime Minister to find him another role that he's good at, and bring someone in with the overall experience that needed to be the chief of staff,” he says.

He says the strength of Blair’s government was its team composition, and that each key member brought different skills to the table – whether front bench or behind the scenes.

“Here we are fighting amongst ourselves – the government lighting its own fires rather than waiting for somebody else to do it,” Blunkett adds.

‘Nigel Farage wins if Labour fails’

Those fires have threatened to engulf the Labour Party since it came to power after a decisive win in the 2024 General Election, with recent polls placing it behind Reform UK and The Green Party in voter intention.

Blunkett says this Labour government faced a huge uphill, and financial, struggle coming into office after Brexit and Covid – but also believes it simply wasn’t prepared for the job.

“We were in a different position, and the main other thing that we had was preparation,” he says of Labour when Blair took it to victory in 1997.

“We had actually done a lot of policy work and preparation before 1997 which stood us in very good stead.

“I think people around Keir Starmer thought they'd done it, but they actually hadn't. They thought a vague idea of what they wanted to do was actually policy, and it isn’t.”

He says the opinion polls are “awful” and put Labour in “serious trouble” if it doesn’t get its act together.

“The feeling of bewilderment by the electorate is palpable,” Blunkett says.

“If we don't get our act together in the next three years, who is it that is really going to benefit? It's going to be Nigel Farage.

“We shouldn't fear him, but we should take him on, and by doing that, win people back.”

This, he adds, can be achieved simply by “putting the good policies together”, and overcoming the “lethargy and inertia” that now exists in the UK’s political system.

What Keir Starmer is getting right

But while Blunkett is honest about the problems Labour is facing, the 78-year-old member of the House of Lords says Starmer has brought benefits to the UK – although perhaps not the ones voters were hoping for.

“Keir Starmer's reputation, and the reputation of the UK, has been lifted since the general election on the international scene,” he says.

“Whether it's defence and security, whether it's on trade, the job's being done and people are recognising it.

“If only we could translate that to the domestic agenda.”

Blunkett urges Starmer to focus on replicating this on home soil, and believes this will “win people over”.

“He's got to avoid this terrible 'Where is Kier? He's not here' stuff, because he's had to focus on international affairs for the last 12-16 months,” he adds.

“Now is the moment to say he's not going anywhere unless he really has to, to send other colleagues and concentrate on building a team around him in Downing Street.”

Can Labour win support back?

Blunkett says the biggest change has been how MPs communicate with voters, and how they interact with each other.

“They've got a hell of a job on their hands. Communication is so much more difficult than when I was home secretary,” he says.

“Now, I'd have to deal with social media, which is really dominated by the far right.

The fact that Tommy Robinson – or whatever his real name is – actually could reach so many people that he can get them to gather in Trafalgar Square is, to me, an indication of enormous change and challenge for a left-of-centre government, and that means new forms of communication.”

Commonly-heard phrases in Labour speeches, such as “we’re working at pace” and “we stand ready”, are a “load of rubbish” he adds, and believes its messaging should begin from the neighbourhoods up.

“Whether it's health, whether it's education, whether it's in local government,” he says,

“If we could get more engagement in the community, where people's lives really are at, that's where we could win them back.”

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.