Keir Starmer's government has stumbled from one disaster to another since winning an overwhelming election victory in July 2024. With a huge majority in Parliament, Labour had the chance to implement bold policies to make our lives better. Instead, one of Sir Keir's first acts was to deliver a speech warning "things will get worse" with him as Prime Minister. There followed a series of disasters, including attempts to cut benefits for pensioners and people with disabilities, both of which the Government was forced to reverse.

The Prime Minister has sacked Number 10 officials, from Sue Gray to Morgan McSweeney and now Chris Wormald, the outgoing Cabinet Secretary, in a desperate bid to solve his problems. But it hasn't worked, because the real problem isn't with his staff - it's with him. There's one moment in particular that sums up the problem with this Prime Minister. It's when many of Sir Keir's colleagues realised that he just wasn't up to the job.

It all goes back to a speech delivered by the Prime Minister in May 2025, when he tried to portray Labour as tough on immigration. Sir Keir warned that "we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together".

Many Labour MPs were outraged. The comments were reminiscent of a speech that has gone down in political folklore, even though it was delivered before most of today's MPs were born.

Enoch Powell's anti-immigration speech in 1968, when he spoke about "Rivers of Blood", including a warning that British people "found themselves made strangers in their own country" because of migrants coming to the UK from Commonwealth nations.

The speech, in which Tory MP Powell claimed a constituent had told him "the black man will have the whip hand over the white man", was so controversial even in 1968 that he was sacked from the Conservative shadow cabinet. So it was very strange to hear a Labour Prime Minister using similar language in 2025.

But it's Starmer's reaction that tells us so much about him. Because instead of taking responsibility, he blamed his staff.

In June 2025 he told journalist Tom Baldwin, in an interview published in the Observer: "I wouldn't have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell.

"I had no idea - and my speechwriters didn't know either."

There are two shocking things here. First, the idea that the Prime Minister wasn't familiar with Powell's speech. Of course, the average person may not know about a speech from 1968, but it was a huge moment in the debate about immigration in the UK - as any historian, political journalist or politician should know. But Sir Keir isn't really very interested in politics, and while some people may find that appealing, it helps explain why he's been so ineffective as Prime Minister. He depends entirely on other people.

Even more shocking, however, is the sly reference to his speechwriters failing to understand the speech they - he implies - put in front of him. There was no need to mention speechwriters at all. The Prime Minister delivered the speech. Nobody could make him say those words. But he chose to make it clear that somebody else actually wrote them.

Tim Shipman, an experienced political commentator and Political Editor of The Spectator, explains how this affected Number 10 staff, in an essay published this week.

Shipman writes: "The effect on his staff was profound."

Quoting people who worked closely with the Prime Minister, Shipman continues: "'Keir basically threw everyone under the bus,' one says. 'That really turned things in terms of the internal dynamics. Even people who didn't like the speech were stunned that he would try to wash his hands of it and hang people out to dry. It also undermined those people with civil servants, who see that the boss won't back them up.'"

To the Prime Minister, it may have been a throwaway remark in a conversation with a journalist. But this was the moment that many of the people around Sir Keir lost all confidence in him.