People are promoted until they get a job they can’t do

It is the headline on this story, written by Pat Leahy in The Irish Times Weekend edition, that caught the attention of this blog. How true and real. And then we have to suffer their nonsense for far too long. It happens in most places. The entire article is also well worth a read.

Here are four lessons for Irish politics from the fall of Keir Starmer and the rise of Andy Burnham:

1. Beware of Peter

Not Peter Mandelson (though all politicians should certainly avoid him), but Peter’s Principle, the management concept that says everyone rises through an organisation to a level at which they are incompetent. Starmer was a perfectly decent director of public prosecutions, an able frontbencher on Brexit and a successful leader of the opposition – successful enough to win a massive landslide in the last general election. But – like his four immediate predecessors – he has been a failure as prime minister, as judged by the public and colleagues alike. 

People get promoted until they reach a job they can’t do.Being prime minister (or taoiseach) is an extraordinarily difficult job requiring ability, temperament, judgment and conviction at levels beyond any ministerial job. 

As Fianna Fáil TDs contemplate life after Micheál Martin (the Examiner reported this week that the parliamentary party wants him to quit after the EU presidency, though we have heard the like of that before), they might pause to consider the requirements of the job.

The unhappy fate of Martin’s predecessor Brian Cowen should warn them that being a popular minister is not necessarily the recipe for being a successful taoiseach. As the candidates for the Fianna Fáil leadership begin to put up their flags in the coming months, TDs should consider themselves part of an interview panel for the hardest job in Ireland.

2. It really is (nearly all) about the economy

Starmer wasn’t great but his shortcomings weren’t the Labour government’s biggest problem. It was the lack of growth in the British economy – both as a result of Brexit and deeper structural issues such as low productivity – that hamstrung him. Welfare spending (expected to rise by a quarter between 2025 and 2030) and interest on the UK’s growing debt are monstering the public finances, leaving less money for investment, and therefore lower growth. Incomes have flatlined, while steep inflation – especially on food prices – has left households feeling poorer.Throughout the Thatcher boom and into the Blair/Brown years, Britain grew accustomed to growing steadily richer. 

For the past decade and a half, through austerity, Brexit, the pandemic and the inflation surge, that trend has stopped. This remains the single biggest factor in the constant upheavals in British political life. One of the qualifications for Downing Street that Andy Burnham touts is the economic revitalisation of Manchester while he was mayor.

The sustainability of Ireland’s economic model, and in particular the reliability of the corporation tax receipts, has been much discussed, here and elsewhere. Whatever your view on that, it is certainly true that an economic downturn and/or a shock to the public finances would plunge any Irish government into an immediate and probably terminal crisis. It follows that the highest priority of any taoiseach is to ensure that the conditions for continued economic growth, and multinational contentment, are maintained. Nothing is more important.

3. Volatility is the new norm

Traditional political loyalties have collapsed in Britain – and in Ireland too. The big parties, for so long accustomed to the largely automatic support of millions of voters, now find themselves in a five-way scrap with the Liberal Democrats, Reform and the Greens. The position is further complicated by nationalists in Wales and Scotland.The UK’s first-past-the-post election system (barmy, but it’s not going to change) magnifies the volatility inherent in this congested and jostling field. Starmer won a giant 170-seat majority in 2024. Two years later, at the recent local elections, Labour was massacred, losing 1,500 seats, while Reform won almost as many. Then Reform flopped at the byelection, and is under pressure from the insurgents on their right, Restore. It’s anybody’s guess what the political landscape looks like in 2029.

The same volatile dynamics are visible in the Republic. Fianna Fáil was almost voted out of existence in 2011; three years later, it won the largest share of the vote at the local elections. Sinn Féin was in the mid-30s in the polls between late 2021 and late 2023, unbackable favourites to be the biggest party in the Dáil and likely leader of the next government – then its support just collapsed.

The lesson for government and opposition? Support – and the lack of it – can come in waves. A government that sticks to its programme and delivers measurable improvements for citizens has a much better chance of being re-elected than one that panics (as Labour has just done in the UK) and tries, with questionable credibility, to reinvent itself.

4. The importance of a narrative

Starmer was an unconvincing narrator of his own story and purpose. Burnham is a better communicator and appears more relatable. But what matters most is not the style with which a politician communicates but the message that he or she conveys. Simon Harris and Mary Lou McDonald are better communicators than Micheál Martin, but voters at the last election preferred Martin’s “adult in the room” persona, his stolid and unshowy record and his message of incremental progress.

It is not clear that Burnham has a plan and a narrative but he will need them, and quick. Given the state of the UK’s public finances, the scope for what is possible is limited.

Restoring growth is a necessary prerequisite for social improvements. Successful left-wing leaders are those who realise that sound public finances are not the preserve of the right.

In Ireland, the challenge is not financial but operational. Voters will insist that whoever is offering to lead the next government can be relied on to safeguard our current prosperity. That will be the price of entry to the debate.

Thereafter, whoever has the most convincing promise to use our prosperity to improve public services, build much-needed infrastructure and improve the quality of life for ordinary people is likely to win – and maybe win big.