The key thing is the speed. It’s not the money or the radicalism. It’s the speed with which Labour will make its initial round of reforms, and the demonstrable ease with which the previous government could have done them too, if it had had the inclination.
Most of the things that were announced in the King’s Speech today were not about money. That’ll come later, if the plan works. Instead, they were about will. Their primary intention was to encourage economic growth. And their secondary effect will be to do lasting damage to the Conservative brand, by showing how easily it could have made similar changes.
Take the planning and infrastructure bill. It will streamline the delivery process for critical infrastructure, reform compulsory purchase compensation rules, modernise planning committees and increase local planning authorities’ capacity. It’s intended to unlock new housing and infrastructure projects – to fundamentally tilt the system away from Nimbys and towards Yimbys. It is likely to encourage investment, make housing more affordable and provide homes where people want to live. It was all right there for the taking. But the Conservative Party could not do so, because its supporters were more likely to be homeowners who complain about development.
The renters’ rights bill will protect tenants from no-fault evictions and hand them powers to challenge rent increases. Its most popular elements are likely to be the most trivial. There’s a provision in there to give tenants the right to request a pet, for instance, which landlords cannot unreasonably refuse. It seems a small thing. But for many people, especially those consigned to rentals in middle age by the property market, it’s this type of restriction that humiliates and infantilises them. It’s the sort of policy that doesn’t get talked about much in Westminster, but could have a big impact on the people it affects, who are significant in number.
A border security, asylum and immigration bill has all the usual commitments about stopping the gangs and setting up a Border Security Command, but smuggled into the text is something interesting: a promise to clear the asylum backlog. This is a low-hanging fruit made available to Labour by Tory ineptitude. The party simply stopped processing claims and froze asylum seekers in limbo, leaving the backlog bulging at the seams and forcing them to spend £8m a day on asylum hotels. Simply by processing the claims, Labour can start hammering down the costs of the system and end one of the most acute demonstrations of government failure.
The water bill will put water companies under special measures – opening up personal criminal liability for water bosses, banning bonus payments if environmental standards are not met, monitoring sewage and introducing automatic and severe fines. The employment rights bill will ban zero-hours contracts, end fire and rehire, and entrench flexible working.
The passenger railway services bill will bring back the railways into public ownership. An admittedly terribly-named “better buses bill” will allow local leaders to franchise local bus services, allowing areas to secure the kind of services that recently became available to Greater Manchester under the Bee Network. The rail legislation will garner more coverage because it is a totemic issue for the left, but bus reform will have a greater impact on people’s lives. Buses are the most commonly-used form of public transport in Britain, disproportionately relied on by those on low incomes.
Elsewhere, Labour did not even have to think up its own ideas. It simply took up the measures that the Tories had themselves intended to pass but could not because of ideological zealotry and internal division.
A draft leasehold and commonhold reform bill will achieve what Michael Gove tried and failed to do – reform the feudal leasehold system, tackle the misuse of ground rent and ban the sale of new leasehold flats. A draft conversion practices bill will finally ban conversion therapy. The Conservatives knew this needed doing, but could not bring themselves to see it through because of their culture war hostility towards trans people. Labour is simply getting on with it.
The plan here is quite clear. Starmer knows he has no money to spend. The economy is stagnating. People’s living standards have been ruined, making tax rises an unappealing economic concept even if it were not a dangerous electoral proposition. He is also hamstrung by his emphasis on long-term plans. Even in the best possible world, with government management working at full efficiency, it will take years before improved NHS performance is felt by the public.
The onus is therefore on quick, cheap reforms, which give a sense of movement and momentum. But these reforms have not been chosen at random. They are intended to stimulate the economy, to create confidence and optimism. Planning reform is designed to encourage investment. Workers’ rights are designed to increase wage packets and thereby demand. Transport improvements are intended to help with employment. Asylum processing will end wasteful spending on asylum hotels and free up the money for expenditure elsewhere.
And yet there is also that crucial secondary effect. These measures will have a devastating effect on the Conservative Party. In every one of these cases, the change was right there to be made and yet it was not. When people start to feel them, they will realise how easily the previous government could have improved the situation had it had the bravery to do so.
The next King’s Speech will be more difficult. At that point, Labour will have to grapple with some of the big, possibly insoluble, problems that keep this country down. But, for now, it is grabbing the low-hanging fruit. And those fruit lie there precisely because the previous government chose not to grasp them.
