Two weeks after the General Election that established the first Labour government in 14 years, Tony McNulty reflects on their first two weeks in power and what this week's King's Speech tells us about Labour's approach to governing and their policy priorities.
As he settles into his premiership. Keir Starmer is keenly aware of the problems that he faces, as well as the opportunities. He enters No.10 with a clear to-do list. He has been frequently criticised for being ‘policy-lite’ but the speed with which he and his ministerial teams have settled in and started making decisions belies this charge, as does the presentation of forty bills in the King’s Speech. But with the crown comes the thorns and Chief of Staff, Sue Gray’s now famous list of some of the immediate problems an incoming Labour government might face needs to command attention.
It is already clear that the Treasury, as it should be, will be in the driving seat in the pursuit of economic growth, but there are also indications that this will permeate across the whole government. New Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, declaring his department as central to economic growth is testament to this, as indeed is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, waxing lyrical about the importance of planning reform. It may be, just maybe, that we are witnessing the development of JUG – ‘joined-up government’ which was much praised and sought after under New Labour but often eluded both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
So, the mood music is good, the scene setting has been thought through, and there is the steady development of policy narratives, if not yet an overarching vision for government. The twin policy behemoths of the economy and the NHS have dominated the opening days, as have the mantras of change and competence. We have had the blizzard of bills in the Kings Speech, but we wait for many of these policy areas to be fully explored and articulated.
What follows is a reaction to this beginning and some reflections on what is to come and what might come to pass. With a good deal less disdain than Burke, these reflections are rooted in some personal experience of government and my role as an academic and student of government. The appointment of key personnel has been encouraging with clear evidence of how the new government is going to govern. Most of the shadow cabinet has slipped neatly into the government roles they had been covering before – a sign of not only Starmer’s confidence in them, but also an important nod to continuity. In 1997, Tony Blair had to appoint his then elected shadow cabinet in the first instance and to get rid of those he did not want over time. Starmer has no such limitation on his choices and hopefully his team is in place for at least the immediate future.
One of these key appointments, recognising the importance of continuity is that of the Chief Whip. Alan Campbell MP understands that the role of Chief Whip in government is very different from Chief Whip in opposition. He will know this because he served for two years in the last Labour government’s Whips Office before a two-year spell as a Home Office minister. Since 2010, he has been in the Whips Office – eleven years as Opposition Deputy Chief Whip, three as Opposition Chief Whip and now as the Government Chief Whip. He will need all his formidable experience to manage a PLP of 412 with such a massive majority. With a King’s Speech containing 40 bills to deal with, Starmer will be very grateful that Campbell is in post. Most Prime Ministers underestimate the potential impact of the Commons at their peril – particularly those with large majorities. Campbell’s role will be to remind the Prime Minister, and his Cabinet, that the Commons still matters despite the majority.
Some backbenchers, and even some ministers, may bristle at the announcement of the formation of ‘mission delivery boards’. They may perceive them as a civil service invention designed to take the politics out of delivery. What are they and what are they for? Are they the latest manifestation of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit – holding departments and their minsters feet to the fire to deliver? Having been at the centre of one of these sessions, they were useful, but took exponentially more time to prepare and work for than any apparent value from them – even for the PM. Or are they about something else? An overcentralisation of the centre perhaps or a challenge to the Cabinet’s autonomy? Perhaps a mechanism for policy formulation as well as part of an implementation process run by the civil service? Is it that smart for the PM to chair them? These questions need to be addressed sooner rather than later or the issue may fester. The boards look like they could provide excellent focus on and support for more joined-up and act as drivers of delivery and change but this needs far greater articulation.
The establishment of a cross-government taskforce to tackle child poverty is encouraging. Clearly simply scrapping the two-child benefit cap does not amount to a child poverty reduction strategy, but it is difficult to see how such a strategy could work without the cap being scrapped. The cap is a legacy of Osborne’s austerity in the 2010s and removing it would take over 250,000 children out of poverty. This is the sort of action that should be expected from a Labour government. The debate should be around when and how it will be scrapped, not whether it should be, and this needs firmly locating in the wider child poverty reduction strategy of the taskforce.
It is also positive that it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer who put planning reform front and centre in terms of the new government’s economic strategy. A serious and lasting reform of the planning system is about much more than simply legalisation. It will need, for example, a review of the compulsory purchase legal framework, an understanding of how each element of the public sector relates to the other when utilising planning and their own land, a review of the Treasury’s rules on receipts of public sector land and a look at planning in terms of big, nationally important infrastructure projects.
Of course, many of these elements were supposedly dealt with by the last Labour government – again with the Treasury and the then Office for Deputy Prime Minister in broad agreement. But policies were left unimplemented; delivery fell away, and legislation was largely diluted and weakened by the time it reached the statute book. This cannot happen again if the government is to succeed.
Planning reform is essential to economic growth, but it is also a prerequisite of the real push there needs to be on house building. The Government says that it wants to see 300,000 houses built each year. It has been a long time since such a target was achieved and even longer, if at all, since it had been achieved solely by the private sector. It will have no chance of success unless the planning reforms come on stream quickly.
The strategy to nationalise the rail franchises as and when they expire is a good one and we know that much of the infrastructure is already essentially in public hands, but what happens then? What will the rail network look like? Who will be charged with pushing and funding the localised improvement that can be so important for local communities. How will the consolidation and changes needed to the public network be dealt with? Is high speed rail dead and buried? Is there any remnant of HS2 that can be pursued? If so, who is looking at it?
The appointment of James Timpson from outside the world of politics to the Prisons’ portfolio excited a lot of interest especially when combined with the ongoing crisis in prison numbers and his family’s experience with working with ex-offenders. Are we reading too much into it? Does it represent a shift in policy? How does it relate to the action being taken on the ongoing overcrowding crisis in prisons? How does it fit it with the MoJ’s overall approach? Again, early days but the sooner there is clarity the better.
Crime and policing will be another important policy area for the new government. This time it does not have to start from the precarious position of previous Labour governments who had to establish that they took the policy area seriously. The Tories are no longer seen as the party of ‘law and order.’ The development of policy around reinstating a form of community policing is to be welcomed as is the announcement of 13,000 new posts in the area. It includes 9000 police officers, and 4000 support officers and promises a named officer in each community. Yet 9000 officers split evenly amongst the 43 police forces in England and Wales would result in barely 200 for each. Although welcome, 200 new officers would be a drop in the ocean in the Met and would not go that far in some of the other metropolitan areas. The narrative around community policing needs to be developed and improved upon.
The last Labour government tried and failed to implement a mergers’ policy that would have seen 43 police forces in England and Wales rationalised to 10/12 strategic forces. The strong policy arguments outlined by the Policing Inspectorate in support of this shift have not been disappeared since this failure so the issues should be revisited – but only with the Treasury and the HCLG department fully signed up to it. The Treasury is where it ultimately died last time. If developed, it should be linked to broader policing policy especially the development of community and neighbourhood policing.
Finally, the new government should take serious note of the 14 per cent of the national vote that Reform UK received. Of course, five MPs is a poor return for such support, but Labour needs to do some very serious thinking around the core issues of immigration, identity, belonging and those communities that feel left behind. Hopefully, the Tories have shown that morphing into a pale version of the populist right is not a very productive response, but at least an element of this Reform vote used to be Labour’s. The response has been tin-eared and maladroit since the Brexit referendum and any evidence of a more thoughtful and constructive response is seriously lacking to date. Starmer making clear in the King’s Speech that his ambitious plans will counter the ‘snake oil charm of populism’ could be a welcome start against the noisy rhetoric and easy solutions of the far Right.
The Government’s policy horizon has been set. The forty bills announced in the King’s Speech represent a real challenge. The Government needs to be clear that legislating is an aspect of governing, but it is not the only aspect of governing. Putting growth and planning as the heart of the promise of a national renewal is to be welcome but will not be easy. The impact of all the other policy initiatives in the King’s Speech may indeed add up to national renewal and radically alter the UK but time will tell.
So, some positive early thoughts and well-intentioned reflections on the start made by the new government, but with issues identified that have yet to be fully faced or resolved. It is, of course, early days, but I know, from experience, that whatever these issues are, every single person on the Labour benches would take a rocky and difficult period of government over the barren wilderness of the last 14 years in Opposition any day of the week – and quite right too.
Dr Tony McNulty is Teaching Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. He was the Labour Member of Parliament for Harrow East from 1997 to 2010 and served in various ministerial positions in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments including two stints as Minister for London.