With another 25-point lead in the most recent YouGov poll consolidating Labour’s consistent six-month lead, it looks all but certain that Sir Keir Starmer is destined for Number 10 after next year’s general election.
And the man heading to Hillsborough Castle and Erskine House as Secretary of State will be Starmer’s close ally, Peter Kyle.
As Shadow Secretary of State for nearly two years, Kyle is seen here in Westminster as a trusted, reliable pair of hands, close to Shadow Education Secretary Wes Streeting, himself a rising star and possible successor to Starmer.
He is also close to the second-most powerful person in the Labour Party currently, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
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Kyle has a huge task ahead of him if he is to become Secretary of State, rebuilding trust between many Northern Ireland politicians and Westminster, so badly eroded over recent years, not least through Boris Johnson’s parlour games over Brexit.
The compromise of the Windsor Framework allowed Rishi Sunak to do something unthinkable for his predecessors – to actually Get Brexit Done. It was considered a triumph of diplomacy and negotiation with the EU, with the strong objections from the DUP and other unionists merely seen as noises off.
When just 29 MPs in Westminster, including Boris Johnson, voted against the Windsor Framework, Sunak suddenly seemed like someone who could not only negotiate but win. The effects for Stormont politics were seen, as has so often been the case in Westminster, as collateral damage.
Pessimism about any return to Stormont this side of a UK general election is an outlook Kyle and Starmer share, with both concerned over the normalisation of the absence of devolution in recent years.
They feel that while Sunak got the technical parts of the Windsor Framework correct, the politics was lacking, with the Northern Ireland parties not brought along. This has only added to the very real vitriol in Westminster between the DUP and Conservatives, previously uneasy bedfellows during the DUP’s most powerful time in its history when it propped up Theresa May’s administration, in which I served.
Just watch any of Sammy Wilson’s interactions with Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker in the House of Commons. Previously the two men agreed on Brexit; now their relationship is like that of bitter former lovers.
The last three Northern Ireland Secretaries, Brandon Lewis, Shailesh Vara and the incumbent, Chris Heaton-Harris, are known to dislike drama in their dealings with Northern Ireland parties. But perhaps some banging of heads together is needed.
Kyle has made it clear this will not be something from which he shies away. He’s been outspoken in his views on Labour’s desire to scrap the Legacy Bill, for instance, which he sees as designed primarily to appease Conservative backbenchers focused on military prosecutions, and agreeably disagreed with the DUP over the attempt to allow Jeffrey Donaldson to double job as both MLA and MP.
Interviewing Kyle on my TalkRadio programme a few months ago, I attempted to pin him down on whether he is actually a unionist. On Scotland, yes, of course, he said, but he was more ambiguous when it came to Northern Ireland.
Labour, he said, would consciously return to the more neutral stance of Blair and Brown, rather than the overt unionism that David Cameron and particularly Theresa May held dear as leaders of the Conservative and Unionist Party.
Last year he said Labour would be much more explicit on the conditions needed for a border poll. With Sinn Féin potentially taking power in the Republic, this could make for a fascinating dynamic.
As prime minister, Starmer would be surrounded by a senior team which properly understands Northern Ireland.
The formidable, affable and highly competent Sue Gray, erstwhile senior mandarin in Whitehall and, for three years, the most senior civil servant at Northern Ireland’s Department of Finance, will be Starmer’s chief of staff.
Morgan McSweeney, another key Starmer lieutenant, is from Cork, joining Labour the day the Belfast Agreement was signed.
Starmer himself has a much stronger connection to the island of Ireland than many may be aware. As a newly-wed, he took his wife on their first holiday to Northern Ireland. He plays five-a-side football once a week in a Donegal GAA shirt, a county special to his family. He spent the New Year holiday on the Cork coast.
And for five years in the 2000s, he travelled back and forth across the Irish Sea as human rights adviser to the PSNI, at times observing officers dealing with riots and parade disorder. In 2005, he said the PSNI achieved a better human rights record than any other UK police force.
As prime minister, Starmer will be more personally involved in Northern Ireland than Johnson, Truss or Sunak.
Kyle, too, has spent the past two years quietly getting to know Northern Ireland, which is key to the role of both Secretary of State and its shadow. It was an approach taken by my former boss, James Brokenshire, who threw himself into his role as Secretary of State, though some ministers I worked with genuinely struggled to understand the complexities of the place.
In recent weeks, Kyle has addressed a dinner for small businesses as a guest of Ian Paisley MP in Antrim, and held discussions with nationalist families in Omagh.
And with at least a quarter of the Northern Ireland Secretary’s role that of national security, Kyle has been briefed by the security services and enforcement agencies, as well as having held private conversations with a number of former Secretaries of State, both Labour and Conservative, on the crucial matter of dealing with dissident republicanism.
If Labour gains power next year, Kyle will have spent much longer than many of his predecessors planning for the role of Secretary of State. This could give him the edge needed in negotiations which would no doubt ensue.
:: Peter Cardwell is political editor and a presenter at TalkRadio, a former special adviser to two Northern Ireland Secretaries and author of The Secret Life of Special Advisers. Patricia MacBride is away
