IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT THE LEADER

Who advises the Conservative Party leader is nearly as important.

The buck always stops with the PM but wise counsel can prevent them from having to pay dearly. In my lifetime the most effective governments that achieved much of what they set out to do didn't just have a confident, strong willed Prime Minister at the helm but had intelligent and perceptive confidants and advisers by their sides. Usually they had two and no more than tree such people.

As Captain Kirk had Spock and McCoy to fill that role in Star Trek (we'll skip the committee room style of The Next Generation) so too did the Thatcher, Blair and now, it appears, Starmer governments. Time will tell if Starmer has appointed effective counsel or whether he will have chosen two planks who will lead him into policy disaster after policy disaster is yet to be seen, but at least he's following the template.

Margaret Thatcher had Sir Keith Joseph and Norman Tebbitt, with Bernard Ingham as press secretary (he's Scotty in the Star Trek analogy). Tony Blair had Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson. It may have appeared that Thatcher and Blair were solo acts but that was far from the case. The right, and left hand men were central to their election success and moulded the perception of both premiers in the eyes of the press and subsequently the eyes of the voters.

The role of the advisor is to keep the PM on message and remind them of the core ethos about why they're in government in the first place just in case they start to lose their way. In Sir Keith Joseph's case, it was to outline the entire direction of the Conservative Party away from the managerial style of Eurocompromise and managed decline of the Heath leadership and into a pragmatic on culture but following the Chicago Way of economics that he could see was where politics was heading...or at least, should be heading. Tebbitt was a drill sergeant and no-nonsense confidant who in some ways was the opposite of Joseph but they complimented each other at the time. Peter Mandelson was the architect of New Labour: A highly successful scheme to cut loose the old, shouty socialism of the 1970s and 80s era of Labour. That pivot to reaching out to the more affluent middle class which won them 3 general elections was in part due to Mandelson's vision. Campbell was to sell this vision to the very class of people he belonged to and beyond through his ruthless control of communications and bringing the UK media to heel so that what Tony wanted, Tony got.

It's telling how much that template was either absent or ballsed up under successive Conservative prime ministers. Cameron coped well enough, although never truly winning the press over as Blair had, and it's telling the wheels started coming off for him once Michael Gove was no longer in his circle of trust and he defaulted to listening only to George Osbourne. It's hard to tell if Gove played the Spock or the McCoy role but it's not obvious whether Cameron had a double act advising him or just one trusted minister of the week on a rotating basis so maybe he did follow a Star Trek Next Generation model of command instead.

Notoriously Theresa May's advisors were her undoing. From a string of bad policies, poor communications, embarrassing images of her in the press which made her look either weird (Tory power stance) or out of touch (shots of her being shunned by other EU leaders) and bum advice on calling a General Election and which policies should be pushed, Nick Timothy, Fiona Hill and Olly Robbins were shown up to be nowhere near as competent as their predecessors I have already mentioned.

Boris Johnson's chaotic style couldn't easily accommodate a Peter Mandelson, let alone a well drilled and disciplined character like Norman Tebbitt but he ended up letting his girlfriend and subsequently wife, Carrie, advise him on everything from the climate and net zero to curtains. His other advisors in the time of the pandemic were Chris Witty, Susan Michie, Patrick Vallance and Sue Gray. Remember some of those names, they will return later. Truss and Sunak too had a lack of perceptive advice or guidance and whoever was in charge of comms for Sunak's government should be shown the door immediately such was the damage they caused for him.

Now Starmer has appointed his inner circle of trust and, lo, it's Sue Gray and Olly Robbins...both former Conservative appointees. People who ruined two Conservative premiers now find themselves as trusted advisors to the Labour Prime Minister. People talk about vetting prospective parliamentary candidates but what vetting was done to check whether the Labour supporting Gray and Robbins and the card carrying member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Susan Michie, would be good appointments to closely advise a CONSERVATIVE government? Patrick Vallance's appointment as a minister of the crown in a Labour government (without having to go through the process of getting elected as a member of parliament) brings into question his political impartiality during the COVID lockdown years as well.

The point about Joseph, Tebbitt, Mandelson and Campbell is that they were highly competent at what they did and did not waver from their core ethos. No one could envision Thatcherism or Blairism, except those close knit trios, until it actually happened. Once embarked upon only a few mid course corrections were required. No focus groups, no media campaign nor any policy initiative could be derailed whilst Thatcher and Blair had their Spocks and McCoys by their sides. Her first major defeat, the poll tax, happened after Joseph had retired and Tebbitt took more of a back seat. Campbell stepped down just before he realised that things were going to go to pot once Blair had handed over to his successor, Gordon Brown. Mandelson had to have periodic times on the naughty step for his repeated misdeeds.

Which brings us to today. Starmer has rewarded two people who played their part in making the Conservative government a shambles in the last few years and we'll see if their malevolence and supposed incompetence was a pretence or whether they really are shit and corrupt at their jobs. But what of the opposition, what of the Conservatives? Who should the next leader keep close by their side? Will they want such people?

Whether it's Tugenhadt, Braverman or Jenrick (or someone else) as the next Conservative leader the person they need more than any other as the senior advisor is Danny Kruger MP. Like Tebbitt he may not be the man who wears the crown but he fills the requirement for the thought leader, the man of first principles and wise counsel Conservative leaders have lacked for so long. He's a National Conservative, which is what the party and country desperately need right now, but not a tub thumping zealot. It will be difficult to smear him as a fascist or populist and he's someone who has been kept away from the centre of the party for too long. He has done sterling work with the National Conservatives and is respected, if not widely known, by actual conservatives. He will remind the new leader, the party and the disillusioned voters what conservatism means and how it can make an improvement to the country in a pragmatic way. If the party brings him more into the way it's run, there's hope for the old brand yet.

And it's something Nigel Farage needs to learn as well: Who are his Spock and McCoys or is he still going to play the part of the one man band?

• Nicholas Hughes, 2024.