Labour's plan for change: is Keir Starmer pulling a Rishi Sunak?

Starmer's is strategy meant to win back voter trust

(Image credit: Getty Images / Stephen Kelly)

published 5 December 2024

"Whatever you say about it, don't call it a relaunch," said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. Keir Starmer set out his "Plan for Change" today, which has been "bigged up" by Downing Street as "the most ambitious delivery plan in a generation".

It comes five months after Labour's landslide victory, yet the government has "hit the ground not running, but stumbling". The plan details six measurable "milestones" by which the public can track the progress of the government towards its manifesto commitments: boosting economic growth, making Britain a green energy superpower, cutting crime, fixing the NHS, and spreading opportunity.

What did the commentators say?

"There is a case for a carefully selected number of properly focused targets," said Rawnsley. "Done well, these can provide stars for government departments to steer by, and prompts to energise ministers and their officials." As one cabinet member argued: "Even if you don't fully achieve them, if you get 80% to 90% of the way there, you've done better than you would have done if you didn't have a target."

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But these new goals "sound a little like Rishi Sunak's five priorities", said Katy Balls in The Spectator. The former Tory PM may have met his target on inflation but "fell short" on cutting waiting lists and stopping small boats. These were then "regularly cited as a way to criticise Sunak for government failure". Ultimately, a strategy meant to win back voter trust just "ended up showing how difficult delivery is inside government".

If Starmer thinks his administration is stumbling because he hasn't set out robust enough policy targets, "then he is in for a rude awakening", said The Telegraph. The government's popularity ratings have "fallen off a cliff", and economic confidence is low. Starmer "can make as many speeches as he wishes" but "the rhetoric is not the problem: the policies are".

What next?

The public's patience is "wearing thin"; voters want "transformation, not just a change in management", said Anna McShane on LabourList. Today's speech shows that Starmer at least "understands the stakes" for his government. "But setting targets is the easy part. The harder task is building the machinery of delivery that can actually hit them."

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Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.