5 hours agoShareSaveLaura KuenssbergPresenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg•@bbclaurakShareSaveBBC”Who the hell thought this was a good idea?” a Labour insider spluttered, incredulous, even two weeks ago, that No 10 would schedule a vote to take benefits from the disabled as the anniversary of their election victory approached. “What genius!” they mocked.They predicted drama, although not a disaster like this.The gory consequences of the decision to try and change the law on welfare this week are there for all to see. No 10 might have been hanging out the bunting, preparing to celebrate a year in office. Instead, for a few days Parliament has looked just as much of a shambles as during the head-spinning days of incessant Tory turmoil.Getty ImagesIn this fevered week, Labour has been failing its basic mission, to look like a capable government. And the prime minister’s authority has been given a hefty kick.Westminster has rushed to its default of recent years – salivating over spats and splits, chaos and confusion. But whether that enrages or entertains you, the bald facts here matter to everyone: a government that can’t pass laws in Parliament can’t effectively wield power. Prime ministers that can’t effectively wield power can’t get things done.So can Labour move on from this almighty mess?A year of ‘unintended consequences’The welfare vote fiasco is far from the first thing that has gone wrong. “They can fix it,” one Whitehall source says, but “they have to realise they have caused it and smarten up how they make decisions”.But Labour has had a whole “year of unintended consequences”, as one MP described it. That’s a diplomatic way of saying it has made plenty of mistakes and a lot has gone wrong during its first year back in No 10.If nothing else, this government has lost the chance to make a good first impression. And some of the events have been baffling at best, and worrying at worst – inconvenient small embarrassments like Starmer tripping over while leaving No 10, the Chancellor having tears running down her face in the Commons (it’s still a mystery why), don’t help give a sense that it’s all in hand.As for the welfare row, one member of the government tells me that this nodded to a far broader issue within the party: it has been a “coming together of so many things that have been simmering”. It is, they add, self inflicted.A senior government source says the situation “is disappointing but not overly concerning”. You might wonder if they ought to sound a bit more worried.PA MediaWhat has been illustrated this week is that the leadership has not understood what its rank and file are willing to tolerate. And management of the party has been found sorely lacking, spectacularly so.Ironically one of the reasons some MPs have been so cross, even before this week, is because “the mismanagement creates a fog and a funk”, where potentially punter-friendly measures, like providing more free school meals and increasing the minimum wage, are drowned out.No 10 versus the backbenchesWhat there is, in the wake of this week’s humiliation, is an acknowledgement that things will have to be different. A senior source in government says “we can’t leave as much of a gap between ministers and backbenchers”, admitting “we’ll have to be better at bringing them in”.The prime minister “now realises he’ll have to be more into the detail”, one minister says. Many insiders believe that there still needs to be a much better functioning “centre”, in other words Starmer’s own power base in No 10.It is no longer the “spectacularly ineffective, 70s farce” of the early weeks in No 10 that one senior figure describes, when it took days to work out exactly who was to do what; when Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney were vying for authority; and when there was near mutiny over pay. But the source says “the legacy of these things takes time to catch up”.ReutersInside No 10, there has been acknowledgement it needs to run better, to improve the way decisions are made across Whitehall, well before this week’s humiliation.The way power is spread across SW1 and No 10 makes it “an incredibly weak centre of government, and that was a real surprise for us”, say those insiders. “If we accept that No 10 will never be a White House then you need to empower other people to make better government decisions”, they say.But others say there is a fundamental need in No 10 for the prime minister and his top team to be more concerned with “the absolute basics” of politics, warning sometimes there is a tone of being “sanctimonious” not wanting to “do the actual business of politics, even if its grubby”. In other words, they can complain about the structures of Whitehall, or the difficulties of what they inherited, but, some argue, they struggle to look in the mirror.”Everyone needs to do better” including …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn5 hours agoShareSaveLaura KuenssbergPresenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg•@bbclaurakShareSaveBBC”Who the hell thought this was a good idea?” a Labour insider spluttered, incredulous, even two weeks ago, that No 10 would schedule a vote to take benefits from the disabled as the anniversary of their election victory approached. “What genius!” they mocked.They predicted drama, although not a disaster like this.The gory consequences of the decision to try and change the law on welfare this week are there for all to see. No 10 might have been hanging out the bunting, preparing to celebrate a year in office. Instead, for a few days Parliament has looked just as much of a shambles as during the head-spinning days of incessant Tory turmoil.Getty ImagesIn this fevered week, Labour has been failing its basic mission, to look like a capable government. And the prime minister’s authority has been given a hefty kick.Westminster has rushed to its default of recent years – salivating over spats and splits, chaos and confusion. But whether that enrages or entertains you, the bald facts here matter to everyone: a government that can’t pass laws in Parliament can’t effectively wield power. Prime ministers that can’t effectively wield power can’t get things done.So can Labour move on from this almighty mess?A year of ‘unintended consequences’The welfare vote fiasco is far from the first thing that has gone wrong. “They can fix it,” one Whitehall source says, but “they have to realise they have caused it and smarten up how they make decisions”.But Labour has had a whole “year of unintended consequences”, as one MP described it. That’s a diplomatic way of saying it has made plenty of mistakes and a lot has gone wrong during its first year back in No 10.If nothing else, this government has lost the chance to make a good first impression. And some of the events have been baffling at best, and worrying at worst – inconvenient small embarrassments like Starmer tripping over while leaving No 10, the Chancellor having tears running down her face in the Commons (it’s still a mystery why), don’t help give a sense that it’s all in hand.As for the welfare row, one member of the government tells me that this nodded to a far broader issue within the party: it has been a “coming together of so many things that have been simmering”. It is, they add, self inflicted.A senior government source says the situation “is disappointing but not overly concerning”. You might wonder if they ought to sound a bit more worried.PA MediaWhat has been illustrated this week is that the leadership has not understood what its rank and file are willing to tolerate. And management of the party has been found sorely lacking, spectacularly so.Ironically one of the reasons some MPs have been so cross, even before this week, is because “the mismanagement creates a fog and a funk”, where potentially punter-friendly measures, like providing more free school meals and increasing the minimum wage, are drowned out.No 10 versus the backbenchesWhat there is, in the wake of this week’s humiliation, is an acknowledgement that things will have to be different. A senior source in government says “we can’t leave as much of a gap between ministers and backbenchers”, admitting “we’ll have to be better at bringing them in”.The prime minister “now realises he’ll have to be more into the detail”, one minister says. Many insiders believe that there still needs to be a much better functioning “centre”, in other words Starmer’s own power base in No 10.It is no longer the “spectacularly ineffective, 70s farce” of the early weeks in No 10 that one senior figure describes, when it took days to work out exactly who was to do what; when Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney were vying for authority; and when there was near mutiny over pay. But the source says “the legacy of these things takes time to catch up”.ReutersInside No 10, there has been acknowledgement it needs to run better, to improve the way decisions are made across Whitehall, well before this week’s humiliation.The way power is spread across SW1 and No 10 makes it “an incredibly weak centre of government, and that was a real surprise for us”, say those insiders. “If we accept that No 10 will never be a White House then you need to empower other people to make better government decisions”, they say.But others say there is a fundamental need in No 10 for the prime minister and his top team to be more concerned with “the absolute basics” of politics, warning sometimes there is a tone of being “sanctimonious” not wanting to “do the actual business of politics, even if its grubby”. In other words, they can complain about the structures of Whitehall, or the difficulties of what they inherited, but, some argue, they struggle to look in the mirror.”Everyone needs to do better” including …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
