Feel like your honeymoon is over, Keir? From gravy trains to who should be sacked, here’s my 10-step guide to being PM

‘THE work of a Prime Minister is the loneliest job in the world,’ said Stanley Baldwin, who did it three times between 1923 and 1937.

And he was right, because in the end, the ultimate buck stops with the person residing at 10 Downing Street.

If you think you’re having a stressful day at work, imagine being woken at 3am to be asked if you want to send British troops into war?

But with such heavy responsibility comes heavy power, fame, and usually fortune (post-office), which is why so many are desperate to do it.

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I’ve personally known ten of our Prime Ministers – from Thatcher and Blair to Brown, Johnson and Sunak – and the trick to doing it successfully is to understand what one of their predecessors, Jim Callaghan, once told a mutual acquaintance: ‘Being PM is like being in a stormy ocean, at first you get hit by wave after wave and feel helpless and out of control, but after a while you realise it’s always like that, and learn to ride the waves.’

I thought of this as Sir Keir Starmer has reeled under the onslaught of savagely negative headlines.

He started well, with his firm handling of the summer riots.

But since then, Starmer-bashing has become the nation’s favourite bloodsport and many of his wounds, from axing the winter fuel allowance to freebie-gate have been self-inflicted.

What he needs is a bit of advice from another PM with intimate knowledge of what the job entails and the pitfalls to avoid – me!

Here, then, is my ten-point PM Guide to Being PM:

1 – THINK OF TIMING

If I was Prime Minister, even an imminent nuclear strike on Britain wouldn’t keep me away from watching Arsenal, especially if there was a chance I might witness a direct hit on Erling Haaland’s cocky bully-boy head.

Starmer’s a proper Gooner who I’ve met at many Arsenal games, and we regularly text each other about the club we both love. Of course he should still be able to go to games, and it would be impossible to do so from his regular seats.

BUT… accepting free Arsenal box tickets worth thousands of pounds at the same time as you’re targeting poor vulnerable pensioners for financial punishment is the worst optic imaginable.

I’m still incredulous that a new Labour PM would make that one of his first decisions.

2 – NO MORE FREEBIES

Stop the freebie gravy train – NOW!

It beggars belief that after all their halo-clad moralising about greedy Tories filling their troughs with gifted clobber, Starmer and most of his cabinet were themselves hoovering up everything from designer clothes to Taylor Swift tickets, and getting Lord Waheed ‘Santa Claus Ali to pay for seemingly everything including their lavish birthday parties.

If Labour top brass keep behaving like two-faced charlatans over freebies, the public will gift them their P45s very quickly.

3 – DELEGATE

Gordon Brown had the most formidable intelligence of any Prime Minister I’ve met, and an incredible work ethic. But he took on way too much himself, and obsessed over minutiae that he should have passed onto others.

I remember being in his Downing Street flat late at night as he scribbled pages of notes from our conversations. His intensity and attention to detail was impressive but must have been exhausting.

4 – HIRE TOP PEOPLE

Hire the best people in your inner team. Starmer’s got a divisive and unpopular chief of staff in Sue Gray who’s failed him dismally so far and should be sacked, he has no current principal private secretary at all, and his cabinet secretary is leaving.

Those are three key posts in any new government. No wonder Starmer’s struggling.

5 – BE DECISIVE

If you say you’re going to do something, then do it. Being PM is not a popularity contest, so don’t worry about being liked. Focus your energy instead on delivering what you promised, and getting stuff done.

If your ideas were right, and you make them work, you’ll end up being popular. If you were wrong, the public will kick you out anyway.

6 – SLEEP

Thatcher and Churchill famously lived off just 4-5 hours kip a night, but both believed in power naps too. Most people need at least seven hours of sleep, particularly if they’re running the country.

I’ve seen Prime Ministers when they’re knackered (Blair once yawned so much when I saw him that I feared he’d locked his jaw out, though he may just have found me very dull!) and when they’re rested, and their staffers would tell me the difference in their performance/productivity levels was huge.

Nobody wants a zombie running the country – just ask America!

7 – DON’T BE COMPLACENT

David Cameron only agreed to the EU Referendum because he easily won the Scottish Independence referendum and just assumed the same thing would happen again. Big mistake.

8 – EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED… BECAUSE IT WILL HAPPEN

When Harold Macmillan was asked to state the greatest challenge for a PM, he famously replied: ‘Events, dear boy, events’.

Some Prime Ministers rise to the occasion magnificently, like Thatcher when Argentina invaded the Falklands.

Others fail us dismally, like Boris ‘party-boy’ Johnson with the Covid pandemic. Don’t be a Boris.

9 – AVOID HUBRIS

Tony Blair won three elections, but his only legacy now is taking Britain into the disastrous illegal Iraq War.

Why did he do it?

I remember him flying to Washington after 9/11 to ‘stand shoulder-to-shoulder’ with the Americans and getting a standing ovation in the US Congress which made him preen like a peacock.

He loved being popular in the US and I’m convinced that’s why he couldn’t bring himself to do the right thing over Iraq. Keep those peacock wings down.

10 – DON’T BE BULLIED BY THE MEDIA

Many PMs suck up to journalists (I still have the teat scars) but Lady Thatcher preferred physical violence.

She once repeatedly jabbed me hard in the chest after I suggested interest rate rises were hurting ordinary people.

‘You don’t know what on earth you’re talking about, young man,’ she barked, ‘and I suggest you think very carefully before putting any of that nonsense in your newspaper.’

HYPOCRITE HARRY IS AT IT AGAIN

Prince Harry’s been banging on yet again about mental health.

It takes a quite spectacular brass neck to appoint yourself the unofficial Patron Saint of this issue when you’ve spent years deliberately damaging the mental health of your family with endless vicious public tirades and smears that you know they can’t respond to.

But then Hypocrite Harry’s real talent is for never practising what he preaches.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Dale Vince, major Labour donor and world’s most annoying vegan, wants the government to scrap compulsory meat and dairy in school meals.

But why should we compel our kids to leave school as gaunt, pale-faced wastrels with anaemia, nerve damage, brittle bones and vitamin deficiencies – especially if they end up as whiny, censorious and boring as Dale Vince?

AJ IS STILL A WINNER

Anthony Joshua got demolished by Daniel Dubois in their big fight at Wembley, but as I watched him get repeatedly knocked to the ground, and then somehow keep getting back on his feet, my mind turned to my favourite movie speech, by Rocky Balboa to his snowflake son: ‘The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!’

Joshua may have lost this fight, but when it comes to courage, he’s a winner.

SEEKING ATTENTION

Greta Thunberg was at a protest rally in Stockholm at the weekend, tunelessly bellowing: ‘Show me what democracy looks like, show me what power looks like…’

I couldn’t make out the rest of it because her squeaky voice croaked into unintelligible gibberish.

Ironically, it would be easier to show her what a spoiled attention-seeking brat who can’t sing looks like, and shriek: ‘How DARE you, Greta – YOU HAVE STOLEN MY EARDRUMS!’

A REAL MONSTER

When Mohamed Al Fayed died, I wrote about the former Harrods owner for this paper, and said: ‘He was a flawed, complex man quite capable of being an egotistical dictatorial monster when it suited him.’

After the shocking revelations about him in the past week, exposing the despicable way he is alleged to have raped and abused so many women, I’d like to amend that sentence to read simply: ‘He was a monster.’

PROUD TO BE BRITISH

I was in the Oxfordshire countryside at the weekend for a pub lunch party with a former prime minister, a pop star, a duchess, a princess, and a well-known TV farmer whose right fist left a permanent scar in my head (thanks again, Jeremy).

We were observed with a mixture of excitement, fascination and in some cases, revulsion, by members of the public sitting on other tables in the garden – like we were penguins being fed in a zoo.

But that was nothing compared to the thrill I felt when I left and spied a Morris Dancer with a massive cheddar cheese on his head, surrounded by bemused tourists.

God, it made me so proud to be British.

PANTS IDEA

My wife Celia informed me that there is a new fashion trend of lacey, frilly underwear… for men.

‘You should try it,’ she said, ‘… if you want a divorce.’