Voters often complain they don’t understand what Keir Starmer stands for. Now they should be in no doubt: interventionism is a means to grow the economy, rather than an obstacle to it. In short: big government is back.
In his first programme for government, the ideology of Starmerism crystallised. Amid 40 pieces of legislation – ranging from setting up a new state-owned energy company, to forcing through millions of homes against local opposition, and renationalising the railways – we are seeing a core belief that the Government can and should be directing events.
Amid all the talk about being the “son of a toolmaker”, pinning down Starmer’s instincts had hitherto proved tricky. Former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock offered up this definition of Starmerism. “There’s no big ideology” but nonetheless there is a common thread, or “macro idea”. As he described it: “You put working people first.”
No surprise then to find legislation in the King’s Speech to enact the New Deal for Working People: the biggest programme of workers’ rights for decades, including the abolition of most zero-hour contracts, a ban on “fire and rehire”, and full employment rights from day one.
“Keir is a progressive problem solver,” Kinnock told i during the election campaign. “He looks at problems and he thinks: ‘how do I solve them by applying my values?’”
For instance, he sees a big problem which is our energy bills and then sees a big opportunity – and he’s happy to use the state to make to make it work.”
Starmer is a political magpie, borrowing ideas that work from left and right. He took two key lessons from Tony Blair’s Labour landslide in 1997. One is to warn the public not to get ahead of themselves. “We will not put right the damage of 18 years in 18 days or even 18 months,” Blair said then. But the former premier also writes in his memoir that he wishes he had taken advantage of his parliamentary majority at the start of his premiership. Starmer isn’t wasting his chance.
With a pledge to build 1.5 million homes, he must reform the planning system as quickly as possible. He needs bricks and mortar to prove his plan is working come the next election, but he also needs to avoid the potential of Nimbyism from his own side. That will only rise as Labour MPs see planning applications opposed locally.
He is also borrowing from the playbook of former Tory chancellor George Osborne, who in 2010 spun an “emergency” budget to rein in public spending. Labour is now performatively doing the same. Like a builder whistling through their teeth at the bodge-job of previous trades – “Gonna cost you, mate” – Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden has told colleagues to go through the Tory legacy, in order to publish a damning dossier of failure.
But it was the decision of another Conservative chancellor which arguably paved the way for Starmerism. The Labour leader inherited a sizeable attitude shift brought about by then-chancellor Rishi Sunak’s pandemic furlough programme. Britons now expect and demand more from government. Liz Truss’s radical small statism only confirmed this view.
The next Conservative leader will want to make the case – if they can – for less top-down interventionism. It will be hard for whoever wins to make the case against some of the interventionist ideas such as banning cigarettes and high-caffeine drinks for children.
Other bills were introduced on Tuesday to satisfy demands from within the Labour movement. A measure within the Crime bill to make assaulting a shop worker a specific offence had been pushed by the USDAW union.
However, the hope of some MPs that Starmer would change his mind and scrap the two-child limit on certain benefits was dashed.
Most Labour MPs were happy with the bulky bundle of bills, though there was inevitably some grumbling. But the grousing was about messaging not substance. Some are critical of Team Starmer’s focus on that ugly word, “deliverism” – the suggestion the Government is solely focused on delivery rather than explaining what they are doing. Looking ahead, the party wants to have a clear narrative come the next set of elections at local authority level next year.
The Proime Minister is also taking Blair’s devolutionist agenda to its natural conclusion, handing powers to regional mayors. He’ll be hoping they don’t become another thorn in his side, as Welsh Labour’s performance in the Senedd – and the defenestration of First Minister Vaughan Gething – have shown.
Some other constitutional changes have fallen by the wayside. No votes for 16-year-olds; and Gordon Brown’s idea to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected second chamber hasn’t been taken up. Few thought it would be adopted wholesale, but Starmer has limited the reforms to abolishing hereditary peers.
Core to the speech was stimulating economic growth, a clear break with 14 years of Tory rule but also going further than Blair and Gordon Brown’s Labour government did. Instead, Starmer is unashamedly borrowing from Harold Wilson’s 1965 National Plan, which set a target of increasing gross domestic product by 4 per cent annually.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves enjoyed an early boost on Monday when the International Monetary Fund uprated the UK’s growth forecast for this year. But Reeves, keenly aware of Wilson’s cautionary tale (he was forced into spending cuts and a devaluation of sterling), will also be examining warnings lower down in the IMF’s report.
It implies she faces trouble in her first Budget this autumn if persistent inflation derails the economy’s recovery. While now at 2 per cent, inflation has fallen more slowly than hoped, delaying the interest-rate cuts from the Bank of England that had been expected by now.
Amid the ermine and gold leaf, Starmer’s interventionist inclinations are now clear. But having staked the house on growth, a question mark remains over how he would jump should an economic boost not arrive.