Keir Starmer / Flickr

Starmer mission tracker. What is the Labour leader’s vision for Britain?

In a speech on 23 February 2023, Keir Starmer promised to restore Britain’s “confidence, hope, and future” through a historic overhaul of the way the country is run as he debuted five missions on economic growth, crime, the NHS, clean energy and breaking down the barriers to opportunity.

“The five missions are instrumental in giving Britain back a renewed sense of pride and purpose”, the Labour leader has since affirmed.

As far as the politics goes, the “five missions” gambit has allowed Sir Keir to continue position the Labour Party as an effective alternative government, while subtly rebuking those intra-party critics who accuse him of lacking vision. 

It is also a strategy borrowed from the minds of academics such as Mariana Mazzucato, who have argued for “mission-driven” governments and strategic investment as a way to drive real change in a society. The point of what has been termed “mission theory” is transform broad challenges into concrete goals — aligning and drawing together different sectors to work as one towards a common pan-societal vision.

Keir Starmer’s five missions have also seen the Labour leader reclaim some of the proactive language of past victorious party premiers. After the Second World War, Clement Attlee’s government built the NHS and welfare state, and New Labour under Tony Blair’s leadership committed in opposition to ending child poverty. 

It means, in stark contrast to Sunak’s “five pledges”, Keir Starmer’s five missions are intentionally ambitious. 

But the strategy’s critics argue Keir Starmer’s five missions are too abstract and expressed in language that is too wonkishly woolly to communicate to voters in a straightforward way. Then there is the matter of what areas were left out of the missions entirely. Immigration and asylum, issues of concern for some of the voters Starmer wants to win back in Red Wall seats, are conspicuously absent — as is housing, arguably the gravest long-term problem afflicting Britain’s younger generations. Thin gruel, Starmer’s Conservative critics retort. 

But as Sir Keir told the Economist in a wide-ranging interview in April, “Starmerism is as much about the ‘how’ as the ‘what’”.

So if Sir Keir’s what is his “five missions”, what is how informing them? In essence, can we locate that which lies beneath the Labour leader’s much-vaunted policy goals?

On this page, Politics.co.uk has put the political chicanery to one side and undertaken a deep-dive of the method behind the missions: that is Starmer’s headline ambitions and the myriad “shifts”, “changes”, “goals” and “policy steps” that inform them. 

We will continue to update this article until a Labour manifesto is released as part of a general election campaign, expected in late 2024.

Mission 1: Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7

Keir Starmer’s pledge to get the UK’s growth rate to the highest sustained level in the G7 — the group of seven largest advanced economies in the world — by the end of Labour’s first term is undoubtedly ambitious. And featuring in poll position among the “five missions”, kickstarting economic growth has emerged more and more as Starmerism’s North Star. 

Indeed, in the aforementioned interview with Economist, Sir Keir gave one especially revealing answer: “Economic growth is mission number one, the central most important mission. And therefore, if the answer is it helps with that mission, then the answer is yes. If the answer is it doesn’t, then the answer’s no.”

Sir Keir has since told a speaking event organised by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change that Britain needs “three things: Growth. Growth. Growth”.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS: HOW WILL THE LABOUR LEADER ACHIEVE HIS ECONOMIC GROWTH PLEDGE?

Labour’s economic plan is based on “moving away from the failed trickle-down ideology and sticking plaster approach to a new model, based on building our economy from the bottom up and middle out”.

The Labour leader has also outlined how he wants “growth from the grassroots” and a society built on an economy that grows from the “bottom up and middle out”.

The mission itself is founded on five “shifts”, which each contain distinct “policy steps”. The shifts are as follows: 

  1. Providing certainty and stability not chaos and short-term fixes. This means:
  • Introducing clear fiscal rules
  • New enhanced role for the Office of Budget Responsibility
  • Set up up a new Office for Value for Money — aimed to make sure taxpayers’ money is being spent well.
  • Set out a modern industrial strategy
  • Create a new Industrial Strategy Council to advise on its implementation.
  1. Seizing new opportunities not letting Britain fall behind in the global race. This means:
  • Public investment through the “Green Prosperity Plan” — aimed to crowd in private sector investment to the industries of the future.
  • Updating the planning system — intended to remove barriers to investment in new industries.
  • Reforming the British Business Bank — to unlock institutional investment so that more patient capital is available to new and growing businesses.
  1. Ensuring all parts of the country contribute not tolerating widening inequality. This means:
  • Introducing a Take Back Control Act — to give English towns and cities the tools they need to develop credible, long-term growth plans.
  • Setting up a National Wealth Fund — to invest in new industries in all parts of the country, with the British taxpayer owning a share of that wealth.
  • Making it easier for universities to develop self-sustaining clusters of innovation, investment, and growth in their local areas.
  1. Giving working people skills and opportunities not leaving potential untapped. This means:  
  • Improving flexibility of the apprenticeship levy, turning it into a “Growth and Skills Levy” —  to boost training and skills.
  • Giving more power and flexibility to local areas to run employment support services
  • Ensuring Jobcentres are accessible to all who would benefit from specialist help.
  • Building more affordable homes by reforming planning rules and compulsory purchase rules, with new protections for renters.
  1. Building a resilient trading economy not a weak economy exposed to global shocks. This means:
  • “Making Brexit work” by changing the government’s Brexit deal and cutting red tape
  • Creating “Great British Energy” — intended to accelerate our drive towards greater energy security. 
  • Establishing a supply chain taskforce to review supply chain needs across critical sectors.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. ANALYSIS ON GROWTH:

Starmer’s first mission, and his favourite to cite, sees Labour seize a key talking point in British politics — with economic growth having been a major preoccupation of Rishi Sunak’s short-lived predecessor Liz Truss.

But the Labour leader’s deference to the Trussite vision for Britain stops with his emphasis on fiscal restraint. Hence the party’s focus on “fiscal rules”, laid out in “shift 1”, which are trailed as “providing certainty and stability not chaos and short-term fixes”.

Currently Labour’s fiscal rules are thus:

  1. Labour would pay for all day-to-day spending.
  2. Labour would borrow to invest, ensuring we can meet the challenges of the future.
  3. Labour will have a target to reduce the debt as a share of our economy.
  4. Labour would use fiscal policy to support the economy and get the public finances back on track. Labour would task the independent Office for Budget Responsibility with defining when a crisis has hit.
  5. Labour would take greater account of public sector assets as well as debt in fiscal policy.

Critics of Starmer’s approach may wonder how the party can achieve “the highest sustained growth in the G7” with such iron clad fiscal restraints. How can a party with clipped fiscal wings, some say, match the gargantuan amount of investment the US has at its disposal for economic growth?

Moreover, in this mission, the Labour leader has tried to turn the somewhat abstract entity of “growth” into a tangible target. But the mission is ill-defined in other aspects — what, for example, does “sustained” mean? 

Again, Starmer has attempted put flesh on these bones, saying Labour says it aims to have higher per-capita GDP growth than any other G7 country in consecutive years by the end of the parliament. But, in truth, this point may prove ephemeral because any reasonable interpretation of Starmer’s growth mission implies doing something that the UK has rarely, if ever, achieved in recent memory. It is ultimately very difficult to escape the fact that Keir Starmer cannot control what Britain’s G7 competitors do or how they perform. 

However, recent updated figures released by the Office National Statistics may give Labour some hope as it continues the inexorable march to government. 

The ONS had produced evidence that the UK was the only economy in the G7 group that remained smaller than it was in February 2020. Now it appears, as of the end of 2021, the UK’s recovery trailed only those of the US and Canada in the G7. 

Still, such a dramatic upward revision notwithstanding, leapfrogging Canada and the US would be a serious feat. 

In terms of policy detail, Starmer’s devolution plans also give no clear indication regarding how they will help generate such rapid, impressive, long-term growth. The logical leap from less centralised governance to “highest sustained growth in the G7” may prove difficult to bridge in an election campaign as Starmer’s economic offer is further scrutinised. 

Delivering higher growth than any other G7 country will be especially difficult given that Starmer is ruling out any major changes to the UK’s trading relationship with the EU. If The Labour leader’s plans to “make Brexit work” see the UK fall short of further growth, the clamour for a closer trading relationship with our former EU partners will heighten. 

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. SCORING ON GROWTH:

  • Clarity: 4/10
  • Achievable: 2/10
  • Vision: 7/10

Mission 2: Make Britain a clean energy superpower

Starmer’s growth plan is intrinsically tied to his green energy plan. Indeed, Starmer has framed this mission, nominally about channeling government resources into aiding the green transition, as being part of a bid to “create jobs, cut bills and boost energy”. 

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS: HOW WILL THE LABOUR LEADER ACHIEVE HIS ENERGY PLEDGE?

  1. Clean power by 2030 
      • Quadruple offshore wind with an ambition of 55 GW by 2030
      • Pioneer floating offshore wind, by fast-tracking at least 5 GW of capacity
      • More than triple solar power to 50 GW
      • More than double our onshore wind capacity to 35 GW
      • Get new nuclear projects at Hinkley and Sizewell over the line, extending the lifetime of existing plants, and backing
      • new nuclear including Small Modular Reactors
      • Invest in carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and long-term energy storage to ensure that there is sufficient zero-
      • emission back-up power and storage for extended periods without wind or sun, while maintaining a strategic reserve
      • of backup gas power stations to guarantee security of supply
      • Double the government’s target on green hydrogen, with 10 GW of production for use particularly in flexible power
      • generation, storage, and industry like green steel
      • Unleash marine and tidal power
  1. GB Energy
      • GB Energy aims to invest in and deliver projects to provide additional investment alongside the private sector. Its initial priority will be to co-invest in leading edge energy technologies.
      • GB Energy will also be able to invest to accelerate the deployment of established technologies where there is a clear case that public sector investment would accelerate private sector development.
      • GB Energy will create jobs and build supply chains in this country, guaranteeing our long-term energy security.
  1. Rebuilding British Industry
      • Establish a national Wealth Fund to ensure that when public money is invested, the British taxpayer will get a return on its investment and where appropriate, own a share of the project to ensure it happens.
      • Allocate a fund of up to £500m for each of its first five years to provide capital grants to incentivise companies developing clean technologies like offshore wind, onshore wind, solar, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage, to target their investment particularly at the areas that most need it, so that as we take on the climate crisis we also build a fairer, more prosperous country.
      • Ensure a phased and responsible transition in the North Sea, partnering with business and workers to manage our existing fields for the entirety of their lifespan. Under Labour’s plans, North Sea oil and gas will continue for decades to come. We will not revoke licences.
  1. Workers, trade unions, and the transition
      • Curate an active industrial approach involving the voice of working people
  1. Accelerating to Net Zero
      • Protect our natural environment and support our rural and coastal communities to thrive in every nation of the UK. 
      • Clean Air Act will help neighbourhoods in our towns and cities become healthier, cleaner and greener.
      • Secure an efficient, integrated and affordable transport system that reduces carbon emissions and drives economic growth across our country. 
      • Make the UK the green finance capital of the world, mandating UK-regulated financial institutions – including banks, asset managers, pension funds, and insurers – and FTSE 100 companies to develop and implement credible transition plans that align with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement across their portfolios.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. ANALYSIS ON ENERGY:

A zero-carbon electricity system by 2030, five years before the government’s aim, is a clearly defined target which will effectively differentiate Labour’s pitch on net zero from the Conservatives’. It undoubtedly makes sense as a strong signal.

Moreover, the mission’s framing as a means by which Britain can “create jobs, cut bills and boost energy security” allows Starmer to align the green transition with what voters want.

But the 2030 target, like Starmer’s first mission on the UK achieving the highest growth in the G7, is bracingly ambitious. There will be a question over whether Starmer is making a future Labour government hostage to fortune on such a proposal, especially given the party’s green activism will be hamstrung by overbearing fiscal rules. Along these lines, Labour also announced in September 2022 that it was committed to generating all of the UK’s electricity without using fossil fuels by 2030.

On green energy, Labour’s biggest commitment so far is to spend £28 billion by the end of the parliament on green jobs and industry. The pledge has been scaled back in recent months, however, prompting both internal and external criticism. But Labour MP Darren Jones, who now serves as shadow chief Secretary to the Treasury, said Labour “still has a green prosperity plan. … This is about implementation, not a U-turn or watering down of policy”.

He added: “The last time a government rushed public spending, it resulted in dodgy contracts for ministers’ mates.”

Alongside the Green Prosperity plan, Starmer has placed a huge amount of emphasis on GB Energy, Labour’s proposal for a new publicly-owned clean energy generation company.

GB Energy would be funded through the £8 billion national wealth fund announced last year by Rachel Reeves, but operate completely independently. The economic reasoning behind the plan is that a state-backed company would be able to make riskier investments in clean energy solutions such as wind, tidal, solar or nuclear, in turn giving the public purse a stake in Britain’s green transition.

According to Starmer, the plan would help deliver clean power by 2030, save British households £93 billion for the rest of the 2020s and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. The intension is to build clean and cheap homegrown power for the British people.

What is instantly noteworthy about GB Energy is its potentially very wide political appeal. The plan has a natural affinity with green politics, while combining a distinct patriotic edge. Starmer has also announced the firm will be based in Scotland, and has sold the proposal as a way on strengthening the 1707 Anglo-Scottish Union. Again Starmer chooses to frame net zero around values and aspirations the public at large identifies with. It may be further proof that on energy, Starmer has got his messaging — it not yet all the policy details — right.

Indeed, the question of how the UK would decarbonise at such a rapid pace raises all sorts of other questions which Starmer must answer. And the challenge now will be to prepare a series of policy announcements and offer a clearer sense of how money will be spent.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. SCORING ON ENERGY:

  1. Clarity: 5/10
  2. Achievable: 5/10
  3. Vision: 7.5/10

Mission 3: Build an NHS fit for the future

Labour policy documents have described the NHS as “an immediate priority” — with shadow ministers vowing to “grip the biggest crisis in the history of the NHS” in government. 

Starmer himself has said the NHS is “not on its knees, but on its face”. 

Certainly, given the state of the NHS, it is unsurprising that Keir Starmer included the health service in his five missions.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS: HOW WILL THE LABOUR LEADER ACHIEVE HIS NHS PLEDGE?

Labour has said it will “build an NHS fit for the future” by taking “long-term, pragmatic, common sense steps.”

The party’s proposals appear to focus on NHS reform, investment in research and development (R&D) (with the aim of improving preventative health measures) and addressing health inequalities.

The broader plan is comprised of three “changes”, with smaller policy aims built in. These are. 

  1. Change so that more people get care at home in their community
        • Reform Primary Care
        1. Improve GP access by training more GPs and harnessing the power of the NHS App by allowing people to book directly for routine checks
        2. Bring back the family doctor: Labour has pledged to improve the continuity by assessing the financial incentives given to GP practices.
        3. Bring together services in the community and encourage Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to identify opportunities to join up services. Also ensure everyone with complex multimorbidites has a named care coordinator in the community.
        4. Labour will instruct the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to make recommendations on expanding instances where someone can refer themselves to a specialist service or diagnostic test to open new referral routes.
        5. Further expand the role of community pharmacy by accelerating the roll out of independent prescribing to establish a Community Pharmacist Prescribing Service.
        6. Free-up GP appointments by boosting mental health support – recruit thousands more mental health staff to cut waiting lists and create an open-access mental health hub for children and young people in every community.
        7. Create a Neighbourhood NHS Workforce by doubling the number of district nurses and train 5,000 more health visitors. 
        • Reform Social Care
        1. End the workforce crisis in social care by ensuring adult social care will be subject to a fair pay agreement collectively negotiated across the sector and task regulators with considering allowing social care workers to carry out simple health checks.
        2. Form a ten-year plan for reform with a set of national standards based on existing minimum entitlements and legal rights
        3. Enshrining the principle of ‘home first’ in social care
        4. Require all care providers to demonstrate financial sustainability and responsible tax practices
        5. Develop local partnership working between the NHS and social care 
        6. Support unpaid carers by giving them paid family carer’s leave
  1. Change so that we have the workforce we need, with the modern technology to deliver the best healthcare
        • NHS Workforce Expansion
        1. Create 7,500 more medical school places and 10,000 more nursing and midwifery clinical placements per year.
        2. Allocate a proportion of the new medical school places in under-doctored areas, to address inequalities in access to healthcare
        3. Train 700 more district nurses each year, 5,000 more health visitors and recruit thousands more mental health staff.
        4. On retention, consider the case for looking more broadly at how public sector pay is set
        5. Reversing the changes made by the government to pension allowances at the March Budget 2023, but introduce a targeted scheme for senior doctors across the UK to address retention issues.
        • A revolution in technology
        1. A plan for procurement, adoption and spread of new technologies
        2. A better mechanism for accountability of commissioners
        3. An approach to identify unnecessary bureaucracy and reduce it
        4. Reform to the incentives structure for adoption of technology
        5. Work with the CQC to ensure regulation involves speedy adoption of new technology
        6. Better horizon scanning for emerging treatments.
        • Harnessing the power of data and digital to join up different parts of the service
        1. Drive inter-operability from the bottom up by having all patients see their medical records through the app; allow patients to easily book appointments online, order repeat prescriptions and link to appropriate self-referral routes.
        2. Set a clearer, centralised direction for future procurement of data system
        • Put Britain at the front of the queue for new medicines and vaccines
        1. Make it easier to conduct life-saving research in the NHS by getting rid of unnecessary bureaucracy and minimising the number of contracts and bespoke agreements that need to be signed to deliver a clinical trial will reduce the administrative burden
        2. Give everyone the opportunity to participate in research if they want to by speeding up recruitment, giving more people the chance to participate and improving the diversity of people who participate.
        • Train the workforce to do clinical trials with a culture in the NHS that values them
        1. Recruit 10,000 more nurses and midwives and 7,500 more doctors training every year
        2. Ensure they have the right skills
        3. Use research to help to retain staff in the NHS
  1. Change so that we focus on prevention
        • Embed long-term planning to ensure there is health in all policies
        1. Create a national framework that ensures focus and innovation across government.
        2. Create mission accountability body akin to the Climate Change Committee.
        • Give every child a healthy start in life with a Children’s Health Plan:
        1. Pass a Clean Air Act with stricter statutory targets on air pollution that match World Health Organisation recommendations
        • Create a smoke-free Britain
        1. Make all hospital trusts integrate ‘opt-out’ smoking cessation interventions into routine care
        2. Legislate to require tobacco companies to include information in tobacco products that dispels the myth that smoking reduces stress and anxiety.
        3. Ban vapes from being branded and advertised to appeal to children and we will work with local councils and the NHS to ensure they are being used as a stop smoking aide
        • Boost health in the workplace: 
        1. Labour’s New Deal for Working People will ban zero-hour contracts, end fire and rehire, and give all workers rights at work from day one, including the right to sick pay – this is intended to stop illnesses spreading between workers who are forced to come in, so they don’t miss any pay.
        2. Empower citizens by training 5,000 more health visitors to make sure every parent has the information and skills they need to give their child the best start in life. 
        3. Tackle health inequalities by setting an explicit target to end the Black maternal mortality gap, training more midwives and health visitors, incentivising continuity of care, and improving course content on the presentation of illness and pain amongst different groups.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. ANALYSIS ON NHS:

Labour’s NHS mission — already rather more detailed than other missions — is underpinned by three goals. These goals are:

      1. An NHS that is there when people need it
      2. Fewer lives lost to the biggest killers
      3. A fairer Britain where everyone lives well for longer

The intention of these goals is to provide an overarching narrative to the reforms laid out above.

On the NHS, Labour is pledging to oversee the biggest expansion of the workforce in history with policy documents promising to double the number of medical school places, train 15,000 new doctors a year, create 10,000 new nursing and midwifery placements, double the number of district nurses qualifying every year and recruit 5,000 new health visitors.

The elephant in the room is money. Of course, an increase in R&D investment, which is central to Labour’s offering, would require more capital spending, addressing perceived underfunded parts of the NHS budget. But the extent of this investment and its source is still unclear. Again, the fiscal rules outlined in the economic mission may constrain the party’s activism in and around the NHS. 

In terms of funding, Labour has so far said it intends to pay for 15,000 more doctors by axing “non-dom” tax status. It has been dismissed as a gimmick by Conservative critics. This aside, any extra money to run the NHS will of course have to be paid for either by new taxes, borrowing or be taken from elsewhere in the government budget.

Starmer has so far tried to deflect heat from the funding issue by emphasising the role of technology in reducing costs and improving efficiency. Meanwhile, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has often spoken about shifting to a preventative health approach. The narrative is that reform will need to do “the heavy lifting”.

The solutions are listed as a series of individual fixes, such as training more GPs and using the private sector more, rather than a major reorganisation, such as creating a new national care service for social care, which some have called for. Moreover, some of Labour’s solutions are less defined, including what role it expects the private sector to play in freeing up capacity.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. SCORING ON NHS:

  1. Clarity: 7/10
  2. Achievable: 6/10
  3. Vision: 5/10

Mission 4: Make Britain’s streets safe

As a former role as director of public prosecutions, Starmer should be comfortable when talking about crime and justice — perhaps rather more so than some of his recent predecessors as Labour leader.

Still, Starmer chooses to channel Tony Blair in his pitch on justice as he promises to be “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime”. In this way, the Labour leader intends to halve serious violent crime and raise confidence in the police and criminal justice system to its highest levels, all within a decade.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS: HOW WILL THE LABOUR LEADER ACHIEVE HIS CRIME PLEDGE?

“Confidence is everything” when it comes to the police, Starmer argues. He wants to modernise British policing through an overhaul of training and raising standards. It comes after the Casey report concluded that the Metropolitan Police is “tarnished” and that austerity has had a “pernicious effect” on policing.

Thus Starmer has said this mission is designed to focus “on the twin challenges of reducing serious violent crime and raising confidence in our police”.

It is also made up of four specific goals — which Starmer has insisted “should invite a sharp intake of breath”. But are they as radical as the Labour leader suggests? 

  1. Halve the level of violence against women and girls. The policies informing this are:
      • Put specialists into the court system – including: specialist support for rape and domestic abuse victim and specialist rape courts
      • Put specialists into the policing system including – including: specialist domestic abuse workers in the control rooms of every police force, responding to 999 calls and supporting victims of abuse; and specialist rape units in every police force, and investigators who are rigorously trained to solve these complex crimes.
      • End promotion and hosting of content which is harmful online.
      • Tackle misogyny a key part of school accountability.
      • Introduce a new Domestic Abuse Register to track offenders and help protect victims.
  1. Halve the incidents of knife crime. The policies informing this are:
      • Crack down on serious, violent crime and prevent young people getting drawn into crime and criminal gangs by: making grooming and criminal exploitation of children illegal, putting access to mental health support workers into every school, putting youth workers into accident and emergency departments.
      • Tackle online sites promoting and selling machetes and dangerous knives.
  1. Raise confidence in every police force to its highest levels. The policies informing this are:
      • Ensure we have more and reformed police on our streets.
      • Restore neighbourhood policing with 13,000 new neighbourhood police and PCSOs, with mandatory guaranteeing patrols of town centres by dedicated officers.
      • Raise standards in policing by overhauling training, misconduct and vetting procedures.
      • Compulsory anti-racism training and training on violence against women and girls for policing.
      • Introduce a new standards regime and national policy reform to tackle persistent low standards.
      • Support the Police Covenant, improving mental health support, training and development as part of proper workforce strategy to develop the talent of officers and diversity of forces.
      • Introduce a strong antisocial behaviour plan, including: Respect Orders issued to persistent repeat adult offenders of antisocial behaviour and tough penalties for fly-tippers and establishing clean-up squads whereby offenders will clear up litter and vandalism they have dumped.
  1. Reverse the collapse in the proportion of crimes solved. The policies informing this are:
      • Increase the Crown Prosecutor pool by 50 per cent
      • Reverse the collapse in the charge rate by setting new joint arrangements for the police and Crown Prosecution Service.
      • Introduce a direct entry scheme for detectives for every police force.
      • Strengthen the Victim’s Bill, including new protections for victims of crime and persistent unresolved antisocial behaviour and increased powers for the Victims’ Commissioner.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. ANALYSIS ON CRIME:

Labour has also outlined five key shifts to go along with the four goals outlined above. These are less specific in nature, but underline Labour’s attempt to be seen a change-making and, even, radical. The message, in short, is thus: Starmer plans to rebuild declining trust in the police following several high-profile scandals.

The shifts are: 

      • Building a trusted police force, fit for 21st Century Britain not disconnected services lagging behind the criminals
      • Adopting a prevention-first approach, not just dealing with crime when there is a victim.
      • Police and criminal justice working together to cut crime not two divided systems letting criminals fall through the cracks.
      • Using the power of the state to put an end to a culture of violence, not accepting violence as an inevitability.
      • Active Home Office leadership that takes responsibility for national standards, not a hands- off approach that tolerates failures

Such “shifts” are focussed on highlighting perceived government failures as well as the areas Labour has pinpointed potential for a new departure on practice. 

In this way, Labour clearly plans to make the Home Office a more active player in the justice system as well as plans to boost the declining numbers of arrests and convictions. Such an assertive approach, however, might inspire concerns over the independence of the police, something Labour will probably have to confront.

Of course, there are the perennial issues of cost and labour, with more details needed on where the funds will come from. The party promises, for example, to recruit 13,000 new neighbourhood police officers and community support officers, without indicating where the money or manpower to do that will come from.

Labour may also have an issue convincing those who are libertarian-minded on policing, both within the Labour movement and traditional Conservative voters, regarding the potential sacrifices of freedom they will have to make in the name of safety.

Ultimately, this is mission aims to steal the mantle of the “party of law and order’ from the Conservatives. Indeed, the launch of this mission followed a controversial attack-ad campaign in which Labour appeared to accuse prime minister Rishi Sunak of not thinking “adults convicted of sexually assaulting children” should go to prison.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. SCORING ON CRIME:

  1. Clarity: 6/10
  2. Achievable: 7/10
  3. Vision: 6/10

Mission 5: Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage

Starmer’s most recent speech focused on his “opportunity” mission, which broadly encompasses education, childcare and careers advice. 

Starmer says he see this mission as his “core purpose”, explaining how he wants to “shatter the class ceiling” and ensure that the “earnings of our children should not be determined by the earnings of their parents.”

This mission has aims including: boosting child development with half a million more children hitting the early learning goals by 2030; securing see a sustained rise in young people’s school outcomes over the next decade; building young people’s life skills; and expanding high quality education, employment and training routes so more people than ever are on pathways with good prospects by 2035.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS: HOW WILL THE LABOUR LEADER ACHIEVE HIS OPPORTUNITY PLEDGE IT?

This mission for Labour is designed with five smaller goals in mind. They are in turn:

  1. Make security the foundation of opportunity. The policies informing this are:
      1. Labour will enact the socio-economic duty in the Equality Act and see that public bodies are required to adopt transparent and effective measures to address the inequalities that result from differences in socio-economic status.
      2. Reduce child poverty by setting up a cross-government task force.
  1. Reform childcare and early years support so children have the best start in life. The aims informing this are:
      1. Train thousands more health visitors to reduce inequalities, promote health and wellbeing to support every family and end the postcode lottery.
      2. Bring down waiting times for mental health treatment for everyone who needs it, through recruiting thousands more mental health professionals and providing an open access hub. This support will help parents when they need it.
      3. Create an early years education which sets children up for school and supports child development. Address the supply side of childcare, not just create more demand. 
      4. Labour will work with the early years and childcare sector to ensure professionals are provided with opportunities for high quality training and recognised for the skilled work they are doing.
      5. Equip every school with funding to deliver evidence-based early language interventions.
      6. Improve coordination between education, social care and the wider services that support families.
  1. Deliver a broader education and the highest standards in schools. The aims informing this are:
        • A broad and enriching education for every child
        1. Urgently commission a full, expert-led review of curriculum and assessment that will seek to deliver a curriculum which is rich and broad, inclusive and innovative, and which develops children’s knowledge and skills.
        2. One of the non-EBacc subjects included in pupil’s Progress and Attainment 8 should be a creative or vocational subject. 
        3. Work with schools, colleges, universities and unions to explore where technological changes can support improvements in educational attainment and outcomes.
        4. Labour’s Curriculum and Assessment Review will explore how to weave oracy into lessons throughout school.
        5. Recognise and respect the work of our school support staff who deliver crucial learning support
        • World-class teaching
        1. Recruit over 6500 new teachers to fill vacancies and skills gaps across the profession.
        2. Introduce a requirement for all new teachers coming into schools to hold or be working towards qualified teacher status
        3. Stop the exodus from the classroom by revising delivery of the ECF, maintaining the grounding in evidence, to ensure the highest standards of professional development for new teachers; work with schools to deliver a ‘Teacher Training Entitlement’; Introduce a new mentoring framework for new headteachers and school leaders; review bursaries to ensure funding teaching is being best used to attract and critically to retrain teaching staff; restructure teacher retention payments; and introduce a new Early Career Framework retention payment upon completion of the updated Framework.
        • Tackle key barriers to learning
        1. Support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
        2. Put specialist mental health professionals in schools
        3. Support kinship and foster carers who provide vital loving relationships for children.
        4. Introduce 1:1 mentors for children in Pupil Referral Units to provide personal, academic and career guidance when young people need it most.
        5. Introducing breakfast club
        6. Champion an experience-rich education as well as one which delivers an excellent foundation in our core subjects
        • Support ongoing school improvement
        1. Replace headline Ofsted grades with a new system of school report cards
        2. Work with Ofsted to bring Multi-Academy Trusts into the remit of inspection
        3. Introduce a new annual review of safeguarding, health and safety, attendance and off-rolling.
        4. Establish a new set of regional improvement teams, to work as partners with schools in responding to areas of weakness identified in new Ofsted school report cards
        • A broad and enriching education for every child
        1. Urgently commission a full, expert-led review of curriculum and assessment that will seek to deliver a curriculum which is rich and broad, inclusive and innovative, and which develops children’s knowledge and skills.
        2. One of the non-EBacc subjects included in pupil’s Progress and Attainment 8 should be a creative or vocational subject. 
        3. Work with schools, colleges, universities and unions to explore where technological changes can support improvements in educational attainment and outcomes.
        4. Labour’s Curriculum and Assessment Review will explore how to weave oracy into lessons throughout school.
        5. Recognise and respect the work of our school support staff who deliver crucial learning support
      • World-class teaching
        1. Recruit over 6500 new teachers to fill vacancies and skills gaps across the profession.
        2. Introduce a requirement for all new teachers coming into schools to hold or be working towards qualified teacher status
        3. Stop the exodus from the classroom by revising delivery of the ECF, maintaining the grounding in evidence, to ensure the highest standards of professional development for new teachers; work with schools to deliver a ‘Teacher Training Entitlement’; Introduce a new mentoring framework for new headteachers and school leaders; review bursaries to ensure funding teaching is being best used to attract and critically to retrain teaching staff; restructure teacher retention payments; and introduce a new Early Career Framework retention payment upon completion of the updated Framework.
      • Tackle key barriers to learning
        1. Support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
        2. Put specialist mental health professionals in schools
        3. Support kinship and foster carers who provide vital loving relationships for children.
        4. Introduce 1:1 mentors for children in Pupil Referral Units to provide personal, academic and career guidance when young people need it most.
        5. Introducing breakfast club
        6. Champion an experience-rich education as well as one which delivers an excellent foundation in our core subjects
      • Support ongoing school improvement
        1. Replace headline Ofsted grades with a new system of school report cards
        2. Work with Ofsted to bring Multi-Academy Trusts into the remit of inspection
        3. Introduce a new annual review of safeguarding, health and safety, attendance and off-rolling.
        4. Establish a new set of regional improvement teams, to work as partners with schools in responding to areas of weakness identified in new Ofsted school report cards
  1. Provide pathways to good prospects for all
      • Engage young people in future opportunities
        1. Train over a thousand new careers advisors, and ensure all careers advisor have up-to-date knowledge of post-16 pathways
        2. Deliver two weeks’ worth of high-quality work experience for every young person at secondary school or college, coordinated locally by careers advisors and hubs.
        3. Ensure all students are able to complete their qualifications and will review the diversity of options, such as T-Levels, at Level 3 before making changes.
      • Create a functioning skills system
        1. Create a shared national ambition to boost Britain’s skills, Labour will establish Skills England, bringing together central and local government.
        2. Combine and devolve adult education budgets to current and future Mayors and combined authorities
        3. Skills England can teach modular courses in priority areas including digital and green skills, social care and childcare — as well as functional skills and pre-apprenticeships training
        4. Streamline regulation and ensuring that regulators are supporting cooperation and collaboration between colleges and universities
        5. Ensure that the ambition for any young person to pursue higher education, regardless of background or geography, is realised.
  1. Spreading opportunity beyond education
      • Tackle the housing crisis by building more houses, reforming compulsory purchase rules and spurring a new generation of development corporations to support delivery.
      • Create a New Deal for Working People to tackle low-paid, insecure work, including a ban on zero- hours contracts, measures to tackle one-sided flexibility, support for collective bargaining and stronger enforcement of rights and regulation.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. ANALYSIS ON OPPORTUNITY:

Labour wants to track its progress on education by focussing on three “stages”. These are: 

    1. Boost child development with half a million more children hitting the early learning goals by 2030.
    2. See a sustained rise in young people’s school outcomes over the next decade, building young people’s life skills.
    3. Expand high quality education, employment and training routes so more people than ever are on pathways with good prospects by 2035.

All this should help ensure 80 per cent of young people are qualified to Level 3 (A-level equivalent) by 2035, Starmer says.

The Labour leader has also worked clearly on this pledge, his last mission, to integrate it with the other four. On growth, for example, Labour argues that this first mission will come with good jobs, “making everyone, not just a few, better off”. And on mission three, on making the NHS “fit for the future”, the party says it will provide the foundation of accessible healthcare — an essential part of improving life chances.

Labour also argues that its Green Prosperity Plan — the flagship proposal of mission two — will unlock new jobs, investment and economic growth across the country, supported by private investment in industries of the future and further devolution.

As far as funding goes, Labour has said that in government it will make political choices in favour of spreading opportunity to every child. This includes levying VAT on private schools and end their business rates exemption, and spend that money improving standards and opportunities for the over 9 in 10 children attending state schools. 

Labour will also end tax breaks for private schools, which it says will raise £1.6 billion. 

The party then intends to spend £350 million of that on recruiting 6,500 new teachers, and a further £56 million on giving £2,400 to each new teacher who stays in post for two years. 

However, the party has been criticised for scaling back its offering on opportunity. In July, Starmer confirmed that a Labour government will maintain the two-child benefit cap policy, for example. Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, has described the two-child policy as “one of the most unpleasant pieces of legislation ever to have been passed in the UK”.

Keir Starmer has also reneged on his pledge during the 2020 Labour leadership race to abolish tuition fees, something plenty of Labour members would argue for as a key way to break down barriers.

KEIR STARMER’S FIVE MISSIONS. SCORING ON OPPORTUNITY:

  1. Clarity: 7/10
  2. Achievable: 7/10
  3. Vision: 7/10

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Twitter here.

Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website, providing comprehensive coverage of UK politics. Subscribe to our daily newsletter here.

With additional reporting from Nick James.

Also read: ‘Sunak pledge tracker. Is the PM delivering on his ‘priorities’?’