When Sir Keir Starmer took to the stage at Pinewood Studios this week, he used the spiritual home of British film-making as a backdrop to make a dig at his Tory counterpart Kemi Badenoch.
If the Conservative leader can claim she is working class after a couple of shifts flipping burgers in McDonalds, he quipped, it means he could lay claim to being the next James Bond by virtue of setting foot in Pinewood.
(Badenoch hit back angrily at the jibe, arguing in a speech on Thursday: “If a Conservative prime minister had made those comments about a black party leader, they would have been called a racist and asked to resign.”)
But a more fitting spy drama for Starmer would have been Mission: Impossible, which was filmed in the north London studios, given the scale of the challenges he faces.
The very fact the Prime Minister was forced to deliver another speech and launch another policy paper only five months into his premiership has also raised jitters among Labour insiders that the new Government will struggle to deliver what it has promised.
Three foundations, seven pillars, six milestones
Delivering his Plan for Change, Starmer set out his “three foundations” to go along with the “seven pillars” that will accompany his “six milestones”, which he will use to underpin his five overall missions.
The policy-speak from the Labour leader has unnerved some within his party.
“It looks like he’s panicking,” one Labour insider said.
The source also questioned the sense of holding another keynote address so soon after winning the election, warning that it has just “given everyone the chance to run stories about a bad start”.
Another Whitehall insider poked fun at Starmer’s heavy use of metaphors, saying the speech “felt like slipping into a tepid bath of buzzwords”.
Ministers have insisted that this week’s big speech was not a “reset” by Downing Street, but it is difficult to see it as anything but in the wake of Sue Gray’s departure, the ousting of Louise Haigh as transport secretary and the ongoing fallout from the Budget, which has surprised Treasury insiders.
It was felt by some inside No 10 that the disruption meant a course readjustment was badly needed. There were festering doubts that the Government’s five missions were meaningless to voters. In particular, the aim to have the strongest growth in the G7 was deemed to have little impact on people’s everyday lives.
The new milestones will at least provide the public with a yardstick by which to measure the Government’s progress when it comes to improving their lives and provide the Government, ministers and their MPs something simpler to communicate to voters.
Targets
The focus will now be on improving household incomes, cutting the NHS waiting list, putting 13,000 more bobbies on the beat, building 1.5m homes and delivering 95 per cent green power by 2030.
A Labour insider credited Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney with presiding over the necessary reset.
“Morgan, for all his faults which are legion, gets language way more than most.”
Another government source also praised the arrival of James Lyons, the former political journalist and No 10’s new strategic communications, who was described as a “breath of fresh air” in terms of providing strategic oversight.
The return to a target-led government, something keenly adopted by Tony Blair when in power, is understood to have gone down badly among civil servants, particularly given Starmer himself has admitted some may be too ambitious to deliver.
But one minister was unperturbed, pointing to the Democrats’ defeat despite its strong economic performance in recent years as a reason for something more tangible.
“There is the risk that we don’t meet our targets, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have them,” the minister said. “You just need to look at what happened in the US, where they had the best growth in the developed world and they still lost.
“We need to show what these policies mean for people, it can’t just be talking about growth, people need to feel it in their pockets. Take the industrial strategy – it has to be about what it will do for jobs. There is no point saying an area will get £10bn of investment if it only creates 300 jobs.”
The minister added: “Civil servants don’t like having these targets but they do like the missions, it means they have a single aim that they can all get behind.”
Among the most challenging of Starmer’s targets is the promise to build 1.5m homes by the end of the parliament, which would require an annual rate of housebuilding not seen for 50 years.
One senior government source said a Tory-voting member of their family gleefully texts them on a regular basis with how many houses they should have built by now if they are to meet their target.
But the Prime Minister has made no apology for setting the bar so high, and he was prepared to pick a fight with certain sections of the Civil Service when he used his speech to warn that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.
Whitehall inertia
The comments demonstrated the exasperation being felt by ministers and officials behind the scenes at the difficulty of getting the Whitehall machine to shift gears to even begin to try and bring about the reforms Downing Street believes are needed to turn the country around.
It is why there was surprise in Westminster over No 10’s choice for Cabinet Secretary following the departure of Simon Case.
Chris Wormald, currently permanent secretary at the Department for Health and Social Care, was given the job ahead of more modernising candidates in Sir Olly Robbins, the former Brexit negotiator and Dame Antonia Romeo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice.
“I am genuinely shocked,” said one former senior civil servant, who worked in Downing Street. “He would not have been my pick. I can only assume they think he can do delivery, but he doesn’t have a great track record of it at the DfE [Department for Education] or DHSC.”
Described as an “establishment man”, who is unlikely to want to take a “move fast and break things” approach to the Civil Service in a bid to effect change.
“He is very clever, he has a big policy brain,” the source said. “He sucks up to ministers and will probably have the confidence of the permanent secretary. But he is not remotely radical and he is very much not a leader of more junior staff and that is a major part of the job.”
Economic growth
Much of the success or failure of the Government will depend on its ability to fuel economic growth, regardless of whether ministers want the UK to have the fastest growth in the G7.
As such, Rachel Reeves will travel to Brussels next week to meet with EU finance ministers, the first time a Chancellor has attended such a meeting since Brexit.
Reeves is expected to be pressed on the macroeconomic situation in the UK, whether her Budget will hold and whether there are any spending risks and market reaction to her policies.
The Chancellor has spoken of her desire to forge closer ties with the EU and she maintains a good reputation in Brussels. But there is concern that the response to her policies back home has weakened her.
According to pollsters, Reeves has become something of a lightning rod for voters displeasure in the wake of the Budget, with one suggesting that Starmer could be forced to reshuffle her out if the situation does not improve ahead of the election.
“He may have to move Lammy and make Reeves foreign secretary to get someone else as Chancellor,” one pollster said.
A failure to push through Starmer’s reform agenda and make good on the promises to an already impatient electorate has already prompted handwringing among some within the Government as to what it could mean at the next election.
Reform fears
“I am worried about Reform,” a minister said. “ I think [Richard] Tice is underestimated. He is good in the Chamber. I think they have the potential to cause us some serious problems in some areas.”
Reform, which this week welcomed former Tory strategist Tim Montgomerie in its ranks, is currently pouring its efforts into Wales and Scotland ahead of the regional elections in 18 months’ time.
A Welsh Tory said there was good reason for Labour to be worried, particularly in Wales.
“Reform are going to win big in 2026,” the source told The i Paper. “Traditional Labour voters in Wales will never vote Tory but they are turning to Reform and I think we are going to see them possibly even being the biggest party in Wales. And from there, who knows what could happen.”
