Stephen Bush

Anyway, much more of this in my newsletter tomorrow, which you can try for free here: www.ft.com/tryinsidepolitics

When Rishi Sunak set up the AI incubator, he had to fire off dozens of emails - yes, I want this, yes we need to pay more than civil service pay bands and here is why - frankly any hack writer could turn that into a strong weekly public newsletter from the PM IMV.

This is I think 100 per cent correct - one way I would “solve” for “the PM doesn’t have time to write” is the newsletter ought to draw on what he has to write anyway. The PM had dozens of back and forths with the Chancellor about two child. Use that!

This is why:

1. Never stop writing. If you are using AI only use it as a light editor.
2. Politicians should write the first draft of all their speeches to organise their thoughts.
3. Prose is vital to democratic societies.

Yeah - need the space in the modern media ecosystem for the PM and indeed for party leaders to make serious arguments and there are good, partisan interest reasons for the political parties to want to own that themselves. But this isn’t as you say, frank enough or insider-y enough.

The reason not to do that is then can’t make political arguments.

Speaking as an MP who writes a weekly newsletter and is currently agonising over what tomorrow's edition might say, what stands out about KS's substack is that it is far too long for an average MP let alone the PM to have credibly had the time to write.

www.midsussexlibdems.org.uk/newsletter

It's interesting that British politics has been so slow to master social media/internet distribution, given how quickly British politicians mastered newspapers, radio & TV when they were new tech. Baldwin would have built a podcast studio in Downing Street & be pumping out content all the time

Indeed One problem that loads of political leaders have is they get paralysed by “then people will criticise us” - yeah, that’s inevitable, need to decide which criticisms are right, which are good faith, which are actually harmful.

People are intelligent enough to process “these are the PM’s thoughts, but not all his words”.

It successfully conveys “not everyone in this organisation believes in this” very well, to be fair.

Oh, thanks so much for sharing this. 😊

This skeet is the Ark of the Covenant, smh.

One of Starmer’s predecessors once asked me what I thought of a PM newsletter and I said I thought the thing to do on day one was to emulate Harold Macmillan, whose first party political broadcast showed viewers the inside of the studio. I still think that’s right approach.

Glad to hear it! I’m still v proud of it from afar.

Completely agree on all points.

Welcome to Inside Politics, Stephen Bush’s analysis of power and policy in the UK Including: Johnson’s saving grace and why the UK’s gamble on Rwanda won’t work

In contrast, no-one has ever had as supportive a workplace environment as I did for launching Inside Politics. The day one structure is still not quite right (why did I want to put the other stories so high up?)

I remember when Stephen used to be the future

Next year, Morning Call with be ten years old*. Hugely successful and a newsletter that brings a lot of people a lot of value.

*My god, I'm ancient.

I think on balance tho yeah, it's always better to try and do something than to not.

Sure, I didn't say 'and he's a bad man'. I said 'it needs a complete overhaul'. Which it does.

The Staggers Morning Call Conference Special

It meant that the first email had a truly hideous design, weirdly minus the NS title and also branded as a 'conference special', so we could, and I quote, "stop doing it after conference if it isn't a success".

When I launched the New Statesman's 'Morning Call', we were in the unusual position that the people who really believed in it (Helen Lewis and Caroline Crampton) had been promoted, and the person as their replacement did not.

Yeah. In my time I have seen a lot of political newsletters come and go. Red Box was not v good on its first day - like Keir Starmer's Substack it was far too long, it did not let Phil Webster's voice ring clearly. It became a v strong rival to Morning Briefing and later Morning Call.

Depends. If you have a good idea but you can't get institutional support to do it well, in some organisations, doing it badly makes it a problem everyone has to fix and that improves it. Sometimes tho it just stays bad and is quietly killed off.

It is almost endearing the extent to which the 'it's actually going brilliantly' people are the same person.

This would be less of a problem if 'Keir Starmer on Twitter', 'Keir Starmer on Facebook', 'Keir Starmer on Instagram' and 'Keir Starmer on Substack' sounded *like one another*, but they don't.

Yeah, I really meant 'newsletters' in general, as in I was using 'substacks' rather like 'hoover'. But yeah - almost all of them, like this, could be shorter.

Part of the broader problem that Starmer's public remarks fit into two categories: "written by Alan Lockey' and "doesn't sound a damn thing like Keir Starmer".

Intriguingly was much better on Private Passions.