Keir Starmer Saves the World
Most people think a leader’s main job is to run the country. They assume that without the leader, nothing gets done.
But what if it’s actually the other way around?
What if the best thing a Prime Minister could do for his country was to simply not show up?
Consider the following scenarios — each of them entirely plausible, and each of them resolved in the public interest by his absence.
One
The UK-EU regulatory alignment summit has been scheduled for months. The agenda is simple: Britain will formally adopt the European Union's AI Act1 as domestic law through a ‘mutual recognition framework’23. The British delegation has flown to Brussels, the documents are printed, the pens are out, and both sides need to sign.
Starmer doesn’t show up.
The EU delegation waits, and calls are made, but the only British official anyone can locate is a junior minister in the lobby who doesn't have the authority to sign on the Prime Minister's behalf. The session is adjourned, and because the framework needed both signatures on the same day — due to a procedural clause no one thought to question — it lapses entirely.
For the next six months, British AI developers keep the freedom to build models that answer questions their European counterparts won’t touch. For a brief and slightly bizarre period, the United Kingdom has the most forthcoming chatbots on the continent. Brussels is furious, though the British public barely notices beyond their search results becoming slightly more useful. A parliamentary inquiry is launched to find out how this happened, but it is never completed.
Two
The Bank of England has requested a closed-door briefing with the Prime Minister on the ‘transition architecture’ for a retail central bank digital currency pilot4, due to launch in three English cities within the year. The Governor has prepared a slide deck: the first slide is titled ‘Programmable Money: Opportunities for Inclusion’56, the second contains the phrase ‘conditional spending parameters’, and the third has been redacted by the Treasury, which is never a good sign.
Starmer doesn’t show up.
The Governor waits in a room in Downing Street with two deputy governors, a senior Treasury official, and a plate of biscuits. After forty minutes, the Treasury official suggests they reschedule, and the Governor agrees. The pilot, which required political sign-off to proceed, is delayed — and then delayed again. Three million people in Manchester, Bristol, and Birmingham continue using cash for another year without any knowledge of what they narrowly avoided.
The biscuits are eaten, the slide deck is filed, and the redacted third slide is never seen again.
Three
A cyberattack on the National Grid7 has triggered the activation of COBR, the government’s emergency response committee8. The prepared response — drafted months in advance and sitting in a folder marked ‘Grid Resilience Protocol’9 — involves invoking emergency powers that would enable real-time energy rationing through smart meters installed in domestic properties.
Starmer doesn’t show up.
The civil servants around the table look at one another, because the protocol requires ministerial authority, and without it they cannot activate the rationing mechanism. The Home Secretary offers to chair the meeting but is told she lacks the relevant statutory authority for energy infrastructure. The Defence Secretary suggests the Army, and someone from BEIS patiently explains that the Army does not have access to the smart meter network.
Meanwhile, on the actual National Grid, a team of engineers who have been doing this job since the 1980s identify the fault, isolate it, and restore supply within four hours using methods that require no ministerial approval, no emergency powers, and no smart meters.
Nobody mentions that the ‘Grid Resilience Protocol’ contained no sunset clause and, once activated, would have remained in force indefinitely. The folder is returned to its shelf, the engineers receive no recognition, and the smart meter network remains dormant — at least for now.
Four
The Prime Minister is scheduled to sign the UK’s Net Zero Implementation Order10. This statutory instrument would legally require every local authority in England and Wales to integrate carbon accounting into the planning permission process for new housing, commercial development, and agricultural use11. In practice, this means that every barn extension, loft conversion, and new-build estate would require a carbon impact assessment before a single brick is laid, conducted by accredited third-party auditors operating under a framework developed by an organisation most people have never heard of.
Starmer doesn’t show up.
The order sits unsigned on a desk in Whitehall. A private secretary sends an email, which is not returned, and sends another the following day, which also goes unanswered. The order, which has no independent legal force until signed, remains a piece of paper on a desk.
Farmers continue farming and builders continue building. A housing development in Swindon that had been stalled for eight months pending carbon assessment receives its planning permission through the old system, because the new system does not yet legally exist, and forty-three families move in before Christmas.
A senior civil servant quietly moves the unsigned order to a drawer, locks it, and loses the key. It is unclear whether this was carelessness or an act of patriotism, and nobody investigates.
Five
The World Health Assembly in Geneva. The United Kingdom is scheduled to announce its voluntary adoption of ‘health-in-all-policies’ as a binding governance principle across every government department12. The prepared statement — agreed by the Department of Health, the Cabinet Office, and the UK Mission to the United Nations — commits the government to embedding public health criteria into transport policy, housing policy, education policy, agricultural policy, and fiscal policy13. The draft uses the word ‘holistic’ eight times14.
Starmer doesn’t show up.
The WHO representative reads the UK’s prepared statement to an empty chair, which, being empty, commits to nothing. The statement, having been read aloud but not delivered by an authorised representative, has no diplomatic standing, and a footnote is added to the Assembly’s proceedings recording that the United Kingdom’s position ‘remains under review’.
For one legislative session, health policy in Britain is made by doctors rather than by compliance officers interpreting WHO frameworks. An NHS trust in Yorkshire, freed from the requirement to submit a ‘health equity impact assessment’ before purchasing new MRI equipment, simply purchases the equipment, and waiting times in the region drop. A civil servant in Whitehall is dispatched to determine why outcomes improved without the framework, and his report, when completed, recommends restoring the framework immediately. It is filed in the same drawer as the Net Zero Implementation Order.
The key is still missing.
Six
A joint press conference has been arranged at Downing Street. The Prime Minister and the Secretary-General of the United Nations are to announce the UK’s formal participation in the Global Digital Compact15 — an international agreement establishing shared governance principles for artificial intelligence, data flows, and digital public infrastructure. The agreement includes a clause on ‘information integrity’16 which, when parsed by lawyers rather than diplomats, appears to commit signatory nations to harmonising their content moderation standards with a set of guidelines developed by a multi-stakeholder panel in New York17.
Starmer doesn’t show up.
The Secretary-General stands at the podium alone, delivers his remarks, and gestures toward the empty lectern beside him. The cameras capture the vacant space where the Prime Minister was supposed to be, and though the Secretary-General improvises gracefully — he is a seasoned diplomat — the image is already circulating.
Britain does not sign the Compact. The ‘information integrity’ clause, which would have required the UK to adopt content moderation guidelines written by people with no democratic mandate from the British public, does not become binding. The internet in Britain remains roughly as chaotic as before, which, by comparison with the alternative, turns out to be a form of freedom.
Seven
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero18 is scheduled to approve planning consent for a cluster of hyperscale data centres in Buckinghamshire19. The centres will consume roughly 500 megawatts of electricity and require millions of litres of cooling water daily. When questioned in Parliament about the environmental impact, the Secretary of State described it as ‘not yet fully understood’20, which is worth noting because this is the same Secretary of State whose department requires a carbon impact assessment before a farmer may extend a grain store21.
Starmer doesn’t show up.
Without the Prime Minister’s sign-off, the planning inspectorate applies the precautionary principle22 — the same principle routinely applied to householders, farmers, and small developers — and requests an environmental impact assessment23 before consent is granted. For the first time in its administrative history, the precautionary principle is applied upward.
The data centre consortium protests, but the planning inspectorate, operating under the law as written, cannot approve a project whose environmental impact the responsible minister has publicly described as ‘unknown’, and construction is paused. Meanwhile, fourteen barn conversions and a village hall in Buckinghamshire, previously stalled by their own carbon assessments, are approved and built, with the village hall opening in time for the Christmas pantomime.
Nobody in government can explain why the precautionary principle had not previously been applied to a facility consuming the electricity and water footprint of a small town. The question is raised in a select committee but never answered — possibly because Keir didn’t show up.
Eight
Starmer is due at his own Cabinet meeting on a Tuesday, with an agenda that includes the Levelling Up Fund review24, the Schools White Paper25, and a briefing on the upcoming legislative programme. The Cabinet Secretary has prepared a summary, the departmental ministers have prepared their positions, and the tea has been ordered.
Starmer doesn’t show up.
The Cabinet Secretary waits for ten minutes, then twenty, and eventually suggests they begin without the Prime Minister, as there are time-sensitive items on the agenda. The ministers look at one another and, slowly and tentatively, begin to discuss policy.
Something unusual happens. Without a central authority directing the conversation, the ministers begin speaking from direct knowledge of their own departments. The Education Secretary describes a problem she has actually encountered in schools, the Transport Secretary raises an issue brought to his attention by his own constituents, and the Health Secretary, uninterrupted for the first time in months, explains what doctors are actually telling him rather than what the briefing paper says they should be told.
The meeting runs long, and decisions are made, some of them good. For one afternoon, the British government accidentally resembles a functioning democracy in which elected representatives exercise independent judgment on matters within their competence.
It does not last. Starmer arrives the following Tuesday and normal service resumes, with the ministers returning to reading from their briefing papers. But for one afternoon, the system experienced what engineers would call an unscheduled deviation from the control parameters.
Nobody files a report, though several ministers remember it privately, and one of them — it is never confirmed which — is overheard in the Members’ Tea Room saying, quietly, that it was the best Cabinet meeting he had attended in years.
Conclusion
If the best outcomes for the British public consistently arise when the Prime Minister fails to participate in the machinery of modern governance, what does that tell us about contemporary governance?
It is possible that the system has become so complex, so layered with international commitments, so dependent on frameworks written by people nobody elected and agreements negotiated by people nobody can name, that the most useful thing a democratic leader can do is… simply not show up?
Great article. Made my day.
Heard of autopen?
Here in Nz, nine years ago, we had a scenario where a political party took three months to decide which other party to align with, and thereby take the glorious throne of Grubscrew Bignote. For three months the whole government didn't show up.
And did we miss them?
Yup, yup, terribly, like a hole in the head
Here in the United Stupids of America, I keep telling people that the President is not supposed to run the country; he's called "prez" because he's supposed to preside over some things (who cares about the details?). Yes, he's supposed to be a part of the "executive" branch, but that still doesn't mean he's supposed to run the country; it means he's supposed to execute something, namely the expressed will of the people, (Whatever that means or how does one determine such a thing?) not only that of THE People, (Yes, we have 2 classes in the land of the 'Merkins.) It does notmean that he's supposed to execute people, either.
Anyway, you are correct; they're not supposed to run anything, especially their mouths, but who am I to say?