Was Sir Keir Starmer too distracted with his post-election honeymoon to react to the IT crisis?

At 8.45am, the Home Office said the government was not experiencing any IT issues. Really? It was a complacent reaction and one that was soon proved to be wildly misleading.

Jon Craig

Chief political correspondent @joncraig

Friday 19 July 2024 16:58, UK

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The honeymoon is over. The global IT outage is Sir Keir Starmer's first crisis.

When the full enormity of the disaster became apparent, the prime minister was about to pull off his latest diplomatic coup: hosting Ukraine's President Zelenskyy at a meeting of the cabinet.

Were the PM and senior ministers distracted by the VIP guest in Downing Street and too slow to react? Almost certainly. And to make matters worse, Leeds was ablaze after a night of rioting.

Global IT outage latest: Security firm CrowdStrike rules out cyber attack

At 8.45am, the Home Office said the government was not experiencing any IT issues. Really? That sounded like a complacent reaction and one that was soon proved to be wildly misleading.

The rest of the nation was certainly feeling the impact, from breakfast time onwards. And in many different ways affecting daily life.

Whether it was airport chaos caused by flight cancellations, cancelled trains, banking paralysed or near meltdown in the NHS - with GP and hospital appointments and prescription orders halted - just about everybody in the UK and all over the globe was affected.

Yet at first, there appeared to be muddle and confusion in Whitehall as to which government department was dealing with the crisis. Not us, said the Department of Health. Speak to the NHS, the department said.

Not us, said the Cabinet Office, it was the science department. Then it became clear that benefits payments by the Department of Work and Pensions could be frozen and not paid.

Before 10am the Liberal Democrats demanded a COBRA meeting, a demand the party is often ridiculed for making. This time, though, it seemed an entirely reasonable demand.

"The public needs to be reassured that the disruption to their travel or their desperately needed GP appointments will be minimised," said Cabinet Office spokesperson Christine Jardine MP.

COBRA isn't as sexy as it sounds. It stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A and is the room in Whitehall where ministers, often including the prime minister, military chiefs, spooks, medical experts and others meet in times of war, terrorist attacks or - most recently - COVID.

Even parliament wasn't exempt from the IT chaos. "Due to technical issues, tills in all outlets across the estate are not accepting card payments," MPs and their staff were told. "Customers are able to pay using cash."

What a relief for all those new MPs desperate for a subsidised bacon butty for breakfast before clamouring to catch the Speaker or deputy Speaker's eye and make their maiden speech on the King's Speech.

The sense that the government was caught on the hop was reinforced when it became apparent there was to be no Commons statement - or indeed an urgent question from the Opposition - on the growing crisis.

It was, however, referred to during the first Commons business of the day, a statement from Sir Keir Starmer's fixer Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden, on Thursday's COVID inquiry report.

Speaking of "the full range of risks that we face", he said: "And we're reminded of that this morning as reports come in of a global IT outrage affecting airlines, GP surgeries, banks, media organisations.

"It's not easy to know what the future holds. You can't plan fully for every possible risk."

No, but it does look as though the government was unprepared for this cyber crisis. Obviously Sir Keir and his team have only been in office for two weeks, so the previous Conservative government must take the bulk of the blame.

But politics is a rough old trade and all those people whose lives have been disrupted by chaos at airports, railway stations, banks or the NHS will be unforgiving and probably blame the current government.

Mr McFadden told MPs: "I will lead a review of our national resilience against the range of risks that the UK faced. I'll chair a dedicated cabinet committee on resilience to oversee that work."

How very Yes, Minister! One can imagine Whitehall mandarin Sir Humphrey Appleby advising the hapless cabinet minister Jim Hacker how to deal with a crisis: "Set up a committee, minister!"

Later Mr McFadden said: "I am in close contact with teams coordinating our response through the COBRA response system." Ah, COBRA! At long last!

Well, not quite. It emerged that the COBRA meetings had simply been attended by civil servants and other officials, not ministers. That won't satisfy the pesky COBRA-loving Liberal Democrats.

The science minister Peter Kyle then claimed: "Government departments are working seamlessly together to understand the nature of today's outrages and respond appropriately and swiftly."

Confirming a COBRA meeting had taken place with officials, but not ministers, Number 10 said the PM could not chair the meeting because of his talks with President Zelenskyy and then the cabinet meeting.

Which is fair enough. But it does seem that the Zelenskyy visit - momentous and historic as it was - did distract Number 10 from the growing cyber crisis. The timing was unfortunate and unlucky for the PM.

Until now, Sir Keir has been an extremely lucky prime minister. Rishi Sunak's disastrous decision to hold the election on 4 July handed Sir Keir an opportunity to make a major impact in his first fortnight as PM.

A high-profile NATO summit in Washington, followed by hosting the big European talking shop, the European Political Community, at glorious Blenheim propelled him within days to the forefront of the world stage.

No wonder his personal approval ratings have gone up in the short time he has been prime minister. But his good luck so far has been rudely interrupted by the IT crisis.

Harold Macmillan famously declared that the greatest challenge for a statesman was "events, dear boy, events" and Margaret Thatcher - equally famously - said in politics "the unexpected always happens".

When he has been prime minister a little longer, Sir Keir will hope to be better prepared for an unexpected crisis next time.

Was Sir Keir Starmer too distracted with his post-election honeymoon to react to the IT crisis?

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