Starmer, it’s all about delivering on those pledges

Good morning. Keir Starmer will set out Labour’s “Plan for Change” in a big speech today. Some thoughts on where his government stands at the moment in today’s note.

Mission control

How do people feel about the new Labour government? Well, they’re not exactly thrilled.

The bad news for Labour is that people don’t believe it is making progress towards its five overarching missions and that it will not have achieved them by the next election, per the latest Ipsos polling. The good news? People don’t believe it is making progress towards its five overarching missions and will not achieve them by the next election.

The big picture political problem facing the Labour party is that it ran on a single word message of “Change” and its standing has, inevitably, been damaged by pivoting to “We are sorry for the inconvenience”. The big picture policy problem is that some of the prescriptions may not work and others, like its chosen tax rises, may actively hurt its aims.

But if it can get the delivery stuff right then it will I think be rewarded. Historically speaking, British voters tend to hold on to a government until it hits an economic crisis and the opposition is not considered to be scary.

“Getting the delivery stuff right” is much easier to write than it is to actually do, however, and part of why Keir Starmer is unveiling his new “Plan for Change” is that it is designed to better allow Downing Street to grip the agenda and make sure it is actually delivering on it. Starmer and his new chief of staff Morgan McSweeney have actively recruited people from Tony Blair’s time in government, while McSweeney has also borrowed some structures from Dom Cummings’ time as chief of staff.

It’s a mistake to assess a new government based on whether it would win an election that isn’t going to take place for four to five years. (Think of it this way: the next election will probably take place after the end of Donald Trump’s second term as president.) Anything Starmer says today, and indeed much of what he does this year, will be as front and centre at the time of the next election as say, Rishi Sunak’s first Budget was by the time of the 2024 one, ie not very.

It seems unlikely in the extreme that Labour will not achieve some basic improvement in the condition of the NHS, the mission that Labour voters consider to be the most important and historically one of the crucial battlegrounds, given that even if everything it tries to do to reform it doesn’t work, it will still be spending billions more.

But the party’s biggest problem remains that pledge on income tax, value added tax and national insurance — the other pledge that Labour’s voters really care about. It’s a pledge that places severe limits on what it can do and forces it towards frankly undesirable revenue-raisers such as raising employers’ national insurance contributions.

As I’ve said before, in many ways the story of the last election is as simple as “Keir Starmer moved Labour towards the pledges that Boris Johnson made in 2019, while the Conservative party did not deliver those pledges and also moved away from them rhetorically”.

The 2019 Conservative manifesto remains a near-perfect summary of where the “centre ground” of British politics is. But the problem is that not all the promises in it — reduced immigration, more money for public services, no increases in income tax, VAT or national insurance — can be reconciled with one another. Although you can soften some of the edges by reforming Whitehall or the public services, you can’t get away from that basic problem: and just as that caused Boris Johnson and his successors any amount of trouble in the last parliament, it will be a problem for Starmer in this one.

Now try this

Inspired by the FT Magazine’s masterstroke of doing its Christmas edition early enough for me to actually adopt its best practice at a time it is actually useful, I thought I would recommend over the next week or so some places that I have received some lovely gifts from over the years, when they might actually serve as useful inspiration.

I really love Canterbury Pottery’s crockery (in fact as I write this I am sipping from a lovely mug my partner got me), and Gail Myerscough’s pattern designs (an iPhone case that I got myself).

Top stories today

• New era | The head of the British military warned the world was on the brink of a third nuclear age with an “almost total absence” of guardrails to keep it safe.

• Targets | Keir Starmer refused to repeat his manifesto pledge to make Britain the fastest-growing economy in the G7, as a new report suggested the US and Canada were outpacing the UK.

• SNP doubles down | The Scottish government vowed to end the two-child benefit cap next year, part of a package of measures to cut child poverty and boost public services in line with first minister John Swinney’s policy priorities.

• Khan unbowed | Sadiq Khan warned that UK politicians must not be “sycophantic” towards Donald Trump when he re-enters the White House, as the London mayor said he still planned to “speak up” over the behaviour of the incoming US president.