Me when I concede a last minute goal in fut champs. Seems he’s trying to get himself reshuffled before the cabinet is

He needs to reshuffle himself out of Downing st. No use just rearranging the furniture on the Titanic.

Did you hate Emma, just out of interest?

He needs to bring in Ruben Amorim.

To what extent is the view that the problem is the lack of a clear project shared in No 10? Developing strong political views isn't the same sort of learnable skill as getting better at PMQs, but I do wonder to what extent Starmer could get better at giving clearer steers to ministers.

It also seems notable that a lot of Starmer advisers who were talked up but left quickly were people who did have clear political agendas, whereas people who are purely pragmatists or primarily focused on internal Labour factionalism have lasted longer. Can't imagine that helps.

The Nick Williams exit happened when I was in New York for Passover, which meant I never got to write about how insane it was: the author of one of the few policies that is a) visibly a No 10 baby b) actually believed to be effective…forced out. Mad.

I missed that one. What was the story behind it?

Believed to be responsible for some inadvertent leaks. (I don’t know how fairly, Starmer is obsessed with the idea of people “briefing” in a way that seems to be entirely missing that “journalists have agency”.)

I recall a piece about leaks on Radio 4 under the last govt in which a journalist said she had literally been asked “where did you get that story from?” by the person she got it from.

“Where did you get that from?” - from the person who doesn’t know they told you is always such a warm glow.

What would a clear political project look like Stephen?

'To lose one may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.' and even more