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In government, a “reset” is almost necessarily an act of political despair — and often of desperation. They admit, tacitly or explicitly, that the path hitherto trodden has failed in some significant respect. Lessons learnt and experience acquired, a new trajectory is charted to whatever political success now represents.
Resets are also risky. Opponents will lampoon the government for accepting criticisms of it that were once vociferously denied. They can make the government seem uncertain and/or bereft of consistent purpose. Nor is there any guarantee that the new direction appeals more widely than the old.
Not all of these observations apply to Keir Starmer’s premiership, which will reimagine itself this week as part of a new “Plan for Change”. Rather, a more worthy case study was provided by Labour’s predecessor government — led by Rishi Sunak. From 2022-2024, there was no focus group panellist whose whims Sunak would not contort to appease. And yet every reset (and there were many) only hardened the prevailing perception of his government as shaken, desperate and moribund.
But Starmer is also a seasoned practitioner of the art of the political rebrand. Since announcing his bid for the Labour leadership in 2020, he has debuted — by my reckoning — ten “pledges”, five “missions”, six “first steps”, two (more implicit) “priorities” and now a new series of “milestones” or “targets”.
Bullet point by bullet point, reset by reset, the idea has been to encapsulate Labour’s priorities into simple, tangible promises. Only a few of Starmer’s shifts have been informed by fresh ideological or policy calculations, that said; the vast majority have been stylistic, with old vows repackaged anew to embellish their appeal or comprehensibility.
But Starmer’s latest reset falls into both categories. On Thursday, the prime minister will set himself new benchmarks, furnished with sharper messaging, within the broader policy framework established by Labour’s “missions”.
According to the many reports ahead of Starmer’s heavily trailed speech, one of the pledges will be to build 1.5 million homes by the end of the parliament. This vow will be familiar to some as the headline announcement of Labour’s 2023 conference, the party’s last in opposition.
The PM will also debut a new focus on early education, as he aims to increase the proportion of five-year-olds “ready for school” from 60 per cent to 75 per cent. On health, Starmer will pledge that by March 2029 the NHS will meet its target of carrying out 92 per cent of routine operations and appointments within 18 weeks. It’s a measure that has not been hit for almost a decade.
Intriguingly, Starmer will also sharpen his lead economic “mission”. Supplanting the pledge to secure the “highest sustained growth in the G7”, the PM will now vow to boost living standards by increasing real household disposable income.
The thinking behind Starmer’s “plan for change” isn’t solely electoral, however. The targets are deliberately designed to connect up and corral disparate elements of the government machine. Writing in The Sun on Sunday, the prime minister spoke of his plan to slash through departmental silos, as he compared “focusing the machinery of government” to “turning an oil tanker”. That sounds like a job for the just-appointed cabinet secretary, Sir Chris Wormald.
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Thursday then, will mark a significant new departure in Starmer’s premiership. And the urgency of the moment is surely reflected in the announcement’s timing. Governments in recent years have tended to exploit the rhetoric of the New Year to set out some novel “phase” or pronounce on “resolutions”. But the election of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States underscored voters’ collective antipathy toward incumbents and the possibilities for populists in the current landscape. Indeed, although the Conservative Party has yet to show any meaningful signs of a comeback under Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is on the march. The time to “reset” after a testing six months in government, Starmer has duly concluded, is now.
But pledge-making comes with a whole raft of risks. I am reminded of Rishi Sunak’s rhetoric in January 2023 when he urged voters “to judge us on the effort that we put in and the results that we achieve.” In July 2024, the country did indeed judge Sunak — and the verdict was historically damning.
Following the Conservative Party’s cataclysmic defeat, former home secretary James Cleverly reflected regretfully on Sunak’s government-by-pledge approach. His “Stop the boats” slogan, Cleverly assessed at Conservative conference, reduced a “very complicated and challenging problem into a soundbite.”
Without doubt, Sunak’s broken vows and his persistent attempts to escape their long shadow, epitomised the disorderly nature of his government. And given the spin that followed, Sunak’s failure was not just of delivery — but of deception.
At the time, commentators mistakenly dismissed Sunak’s pledges as too mundane and realisable to cut through. Sunakian success is, of course, a counterfactual. But his “broken promises” carried immense political weight. Voters do not give governments credit for trying.
And so Starmer should study Sunak’s administration closely. It is replete with case studies of how political missteps can engender public disquiet, anger and — ultimately — crushing electoral comeuppance.
The challenge the prime minister invites with his pledges is threefold. He must first make his “terms” the people’s “terms”; in other words, voters must view Labour’s vows as reflecting their concerns, aspirations and anxieties. There is no point hitting your pledges if voters reject them as irrelevant. Sunak, arguably, failed on this count.
Secondly, Starmer must, in time, be able to cite his successes in ways that chime with the lived experience of the electorate. Sunak, certainly, failed on this count.
And in this age of noisy politics, winning the argument on pledge success will be far from simple. By the time of the next election, the battle for political supremacy could reflect still-emerging frictions between competing realities. Already, every action of the government triggers some manner of furore — and Starmer, always at the storm’s centre, is inevitably ascribed the worst of intentions. No measure is immune from the churn of noisy controversy that Starmer vowed to end in opposition.
Starmer believes that delivery, experienced and felt by voters, will thwart the populist tide. But will his success prove so profound that it cuts through the steadily escalating media-political noise?
Thirdly and most importantly, therefore, voters will need to credit Starmer if they are to re-elect his government. In this febrile political moment, as hostile actors circle, securing recognition could prove the trickiest task of them all.
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Lunchtime soundbite
‘The government has set a clear mandate – an ambitious agenda with working people at its heart. That will require each and every one of us to embrace the change agenda in how the British state operates.’
— Sir Chris Wormald comments as he is appointed the new cabinet secretary, replacing Simon Case.
Now try this…
‘“Tell us what you want”: Labour gets cozy with the City as 2008 crash fades’
From Politico: “Long gone are the days of banker-bashing, as Labour asks the finance sector to help write the rules.
‘Farmer vote to put Starmer under pressure from rural Labour MPs’
Via The Telegraph. (Paywall)
‘New plan would ‘transform’ end of life care for 100,000 in England and Wales’
The Guardian reports.
On this day in 2023:
Week-in-Review: From Greek marbles to net zero, Sunak’s embrace of ‘wedge politics’ is taking a toll
