Friends ask who my ideal Prime Minister would be, as if such a creature could be conjured by rummaging through the Westminster parts bin with a spanner. The answer, depressingly, is that no one person fits the bill. The current crop is more Halfords bargain shelf than Rolls Royce. But if I were forced to build one, the usable components do exist.
I would begin with Starmer’s steadiness. Not the evasive fog he produces when cornered, but the underlying calm and the habit of checking the evidence before committing to a course of action. After years of Conservative improvisation and Reform’s pub bore theatrics, the simple act of thinking before speaking is an upgrade. He is dull, but the country could do with a long sip of dull.
Then I would add Rachel Reeves’s fiscal discipline. Her biggest asset is understanding that money is real. She does not treat the bond markets as a theological experiment. She will not tank pensions on a whim. It is not glamorous, but it is the difference between a functioning country and a Truss tribute band.
But fiscal discipline alone is not enough. If you want the arithmetic with teeth, you would need to borrow the best of Gordon Brown. He is no longer an MP, so he cannot be part of the “closest to PM” conversation, but he belongs in the ideal build. He could turn spreadsheets into actual public services. Schools, hospitals, Sure Start, long term investment, actual strategy rather than magical thinking. And when the global financial system tore itself open in 2008, he stabilised it. Not by vibes, not by shouting at Europe, but by understanding the machinery well enough to stop it collapsing. That calibre simply does not exist in the present House.
For spine, I would add Yvette Cooper. She talks about borders, extremism and the ECHR using law rather than folklore. She does not need to bellow about invasion or civilisation as though auditioning for GBN. She simply reads the brief, understands it and argues from reality. It is astonishing how rare that has become.
To fix the social fabric, I would slip in some of Andy Burnham’s systems thinking. He sees that housing, buses, early years support and rough sleeping are not separate ministry fiefdoms but one interlocking network. Rebuild the basics and half the country’s problems soften. It is not radical. It is simply competent.
For communication, a dash of Blair before the halo began to glow. He could explain a policy in a way that did not insult the audience. Not the foreign policy legacy, just the clarity. Britain has spent so long listening to Conservative ministers describing fantasies as fact that it has forgotten what coherent speech sounds like. But, again, not an MP.
Once more, not an MP, but a teaspoon of Rory Stewart’s curiosity would be helpful too. Not the misty eyed One Nation nostalgia, but the willingness to read beyond the headline and accept that the world is complicated. It is a quality utterly absent from the Farageist echo chamber, where simplicity is mistaken for truth.
And running beneath it all, a quiet, pragmatic European instinct. No flags. No grandstanding. Just a slow re alignment with the single market and the regulatory architecture that underpins our prosperity. Not because it is ideological, but because it is mathematically required.
Put these parts together and you get a leader who actually understands reality. Someone who sees public office as a responsibility, not a performance. Someone who can count, listen, plan and remain calm when the world goes sideways. Someone who does not confuse volume with leadership or treat complex problems as if they can be shouted into submission.
But here is the rub. No one alive in Parliament today possesses the full set.
Starmer comes closest, which tells you everything about the state of our politics. He is safe, serious and largely competent, but missing entire limbs of the ideal design. He can steer the ship, but he will not rebuild it mid storm. Still, compared to the alternatives, he is the only adult left in the room.
Everyone else either lacks the range, the intellect or the basic connection to reality.
So the ideal Prime Minister remains an engineering project. The real one, for now, is the least risky operator available. Given the wreckage of the past decade and a half, that will have to do.
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