Every prime minister in difficulty comes up against a cliff edge, their last opportunity to regain the initiative. Sir Keir Starmer’s will come this summer. If he doesn’t return in the autumn with a dramatically altered and dynamic team and agenda, recent history suggests he will continue on as PM, but in office, not in power.

The country is crying out for decisive, dynamic and energising leadership.

Discontent is growing among the hardworking population who see their labour poorly rewarded, are furious at immigration and the growth of lawlessness, and despair about jobs and hope for their children. Fail to get a grip, and Nigel Farage’s Reform could win the next general election. Labour will be held primarily responsible.

Starmer has several vital qualities to be an effective PM — hard work, courage, calm, seriousness and a gift for foreign relationships. He now needs to make up for what he lacks by appointing better people around him.

He has been told by everyone he needs to get a grip. Stern memos have resulted, homilies given and working parties set up to improve matters. All a waste of time as nothing fundamental will change. As one adviser put it to me, harshly but fairly: “They can’t decide anything beyond tomorrow. They take decisions, then reverse them, only to deny that they’ve done it.”

Starmer and his team are incapable of working out what to do. So here is my formula, based on four decades of writing about the role of prime minister and No 10. Every premiership is different, but united on two inviolable points: they succeed only with the right, trusted people in the right jobs, and they succeed only if the prime minister has a clear story to tell their troops and the nation at large. Winston Churchill did both in the Second World War, Clement Attlee did when rebuilding the country after it, and Margaret Thatcher did restoring dynamism in the 1980s.

At present, Starmer is not getting either right and shows no sign he understands their importance. He hasn’t yet grown into the job, or learnt how to use his time optimally or communicate a clear purpose. He doesn’t trust staff, and continues to make the most basic mistakes. In the past week alone, he’s run a ministerial stocktake — a performance review along the lines of Tony Blair’s Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit to assess the progress and implementation of policy — that had those present wincing at his lack of direction, and hosted a party for journalists in No 10 at which he arrived an hour late and left after ten minutes.

Prime ministers have multiple problems assaulting them every hour of the day. The best leaders know they are only as good as their best aides, the two most important being the cabinet secretary who runs Whitehall and the civil service, and the chief of staff who runs their life and Downing Street. It’s an open secret Starmer doesn’t understand the role either plays. He thus appointed his cabinet secretary, Sir Chris Wormald, against advice this year, and quickly realised he was the wrong person. Like Sue Gray, who he selected as his chief of staff, Wormald is a gifted public servant who, rather than receiving advice on how to improve, found himself being briefed against.

To compensate for Starmer’s lacunae, Labour needs a massive injection of proven talent, from outside politics, from the successful Blair and Brown era, and from lower down the party.

Let’s start at the top. A head of the civil service with a proven record and appetite for transformation is required.

Performance needs colossal boosting, and pride restored. Step up Dame Antonia Romeo, now sorting out the Home Office, and Dame Tamara Finkelstein, the appointment panel’s recommendation rebuffed by Starmer.

Although it is unlikely, it would be interesting to see Dame Kate Bingham, who sorted out vaccines during Covid, help in the gargantuan task of making the civil service fit for purpose.

No 10 needs a boss who can sort out its legendary muddle and duplication with the Cabinet Office. The former aide Will Macfarlane is the standout choice.

The current chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, should focus on his undoubted strength, election strategy, while the veteran Pat McFadden should ensure a much better job is done looking after troublesome backbenchers.

The cabinet is underpowered.

Starmer needs to promote brilliant youngsters seasoned by those with proven track records. A return of David Miliband to oversee domestic policy and knock ministers into shape might seem a stretch. But not more so than when Brown magicked Peter Mandelson back from Brussels in 2008. It would be a huge signal of intent.

Starmer doesn’t understand the economy or growth. Yet the PM, not the chancellor, is First Lord of the Treasury.

He can’t move Rachel Reeves, so he needs to create an economic powerhouse in No 10 led by an economic adviser, to do the equivalent of what Alan Walters did for Thatcher. This would be supported by a team of superlative entrepreneurs and financial minds — people such as Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England, Sir Damon Buffini, a former asset manager and now chairman of the BBC Commercial Board, and Baroness Vadera, the former aide and minister to Gordon Brown.

The other vital task for Starmer is to establish and promulgate his strategic direction. The problem is he hasn’t been doing it, which is why Steamship Starmer has been going round in circles and making about-turns. He badly needs a muse, as Blair had in Andrew Adonis, who defined “Blairism”. Convenient then that Starmer has at hand the Europe minister and ally Nick Thomas- Symonds, who has written biographies of the Labour leaders Attlee and Harold Wilson, to sculpt that vision with him.

The portmanteau theme for his premiership that history suggests would fit best is “strength”. It served the Conservatives well in 1955 and 1983, as it did for Labour in 2001. A strong Britain, with Labour showing demonstrable progress towards building a strong economy, strong defence, strong personal security, strong borders, strong trading relations and strong public services, would carry all before it and set the agenda for other parties to follow, all underpinned by leveraging AI for the common good.

Starmer still has four years. Will he rearrange the deckchairs this summer on his directionless premiership, becoming distracted by strikes and riots, or will he dash up to the bridge, bark out clear instructions and announce for the first time a dynamic direction for Britain to divert it from disaster, before it is too late?

Sir Anthony Seldon has written eight books on recent prime ministers, as well as The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister