The gaping void in Starmers agenda exposed by Labour’s first month in power

“Be in no doubt the work of change starts here and now,” Sir Keir Starmer declared to the nation when assuming the position of the Prime Minister one month ago. 
 
Even in victory, the Labour leader touched the nation’s nerve by focusing on a profound problem: people no longer believed in politics. 
 
His government would be of ‘deeds and not of rhetoric, as he would put it, while cautioning that there was ‘a desertion of the spirit, the lustre, the promise of the better tomorrow”. 
 
But for all the discursive, overtly professionalized language and themes, questions arose as to how revolutionary this bland, methodical, lawyering , administrative politician would be once ensconced in power. 
 
A month has passed since that dark Friday afternoon in Downing Street, and one would think that fog obscuring the further plans of the new British Prime Minister, is gradually dissipating. 
 
An announcement on housing yesterday gave some substance to Starmer’s promise to release blocks of the green belt for development and was far more cataclysmic than previously envisaged. 
 
Still, consolidation plans that are needed to implement most of the grand vows he’s made are still missing. Nevertheless, as one looks closer, there remains a colossal gap in the PM’s domestic strategy that cannot be overlooked. 
 
Housing 

To show the Labour Party is blowing in a new direction, Sir Keir called for storm Angela. 
 
This week’s Commons plant was the Deputy Prime Minister, required to launch what was advertised as the most radical shake-up of Britain’s creaking planning laws in a generation. 
 
However, Rayner went straight to work on erasing Tory’s planning framework by zealously blotting out any requirement for new homes to be beautiful. 
 
She re-necessitated councils on the need to build houses compulsorily and increased the number by 25% for each authority and also provided a rather broad definition as to what could be classified as the ugly green belt that Labour describes as new homes land – the green belt. 
 
For Samuel Hughes, the head of housing at the Centre for Policy Studies, a UK based think tank, the week’s announcement shows that Labour is serious in real terms on housing proposing a rather a big and bold package. 
 
Yes there are ways to ensure local authorities are compelled to deliver on the proposed housing numbers and they wish to strengthen these; hence the higher numbers should be regarded seriously. ” 
 
What has been lacking more significantly however is information on Rayner’s widely advertised strategies for a new wave of towns to help establish Britain as a third economy to accommodate the increasing concern of housing deficits. 
 
This week the Deputy Prime Minister announced the new task force that will identify the locations for the settlements, nevertheless, very little confidence has been expressed whether the settlements will ever be constructed. 
 
To do that, Labour will have to considerably increase the Government’s application of Compulsory Purchase Orders in order to acquire land relatively cheaply, and confront potentially large infrastructure issues. 
 
Some eyebrows were raised when Rayner said that some of the new towns might house no more than 10, 000 home, which was interpreted as downgrading her vision gradually. 
 
Tim Leunig, another ex-civil service adviser in the Housing Department, also tendered that Labour’s plan may not turn out to be advantageous to the young workers who most require the additional homes. 
 
The goals of Rayner are set according to a dubious new formula which has shifted PPP focus from large metropolitan areas such as London to shires & the rural North. 
 
Leunig said young people are going to be very disappointed with Labour in five years if they stick to this plan; he does not like the outcome of it at all. 
 
Migration 
 
To some extent the fact that so many new houses are required is due to a record level of migration Britain has witnessed. 
 
Starmer tried to assume the mantle on one of the most sensitive issues for Labour by pitching it as the subject of the European Political Community summit that he has recently hosted in Britain. However, several hefty issues are looming as to what the Prime Minister will do to stop small boat crossings as he paints his vision of a new international cooperation and “smashing the gangs”. 
 
In fact, one of his very first moves after moving into NO. 10 was to secretly bury the Rwanda plan that had formed the centerpiece of the Tories’ strategy on unauthorized immigration. 
 
Deputy director of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory Rob McNeil said that this decision was quite different from the Conservatives’ discourses of non-encouragement of immigration. 
 
“It’s moving away from saying the only fix to this is hawkish measures, because time and time again deterrence strategies do not work. ” 
 
However, he stated that apart from scrapping the Rwanda plan, there is not much otherwise new and distinctive in Starmer’s so far announced policy agenda – proclaimed ‘package’ headed by the phrase “smash” aimed at smuggling gangs. 
 
Starmer had also committed to stop the gangs involved in small boat arrivals using the existing anti-terrorist laws. But McNeil says: “Implementation is going to come down to the nuts and bolts and here we don’t get much of a window into counter-terror powers. ”

Meantime, what we can observe now is not far from the existing Stop the Boats policy which was on the same note stating that you have to strike the criminal side. 
 
“Which is a perfectly reasonable strategy, but understand that doing so will not prevent the boats from arriving. ” 
 
McNeil stressed that any effective policy to prevent and combat the phenomenon of illegality would include secondment agreements according to which migrants in Britain would be returned to the country of origin. 
 
Prior to the election, Starmer vowed to negotiate more such deals with the European Union, however, many countries in the bloc are not keen to strike one. 
 
Starmer also mentioned the option of off-shoring where the small boats arrivals are sent overseas to have their asylum claim determined. 
 
But even that would entail making deals with other countries which, given the difficulty of finding partners, is believed to be a plan which he will abandon discreetly. 
 
Mr Corbyn might have better fortunes doing so after vowing in his party’s manifesto to “cut” the overall number of arrivals although he never attached a figure to the pledge. 
 
Here, Starmer has constantly shied away from canvassing how exactly he would accomplish this objective. Still, he may be in a position to support it given the reported intention by Rishi Sunak to make it harder for foreigners to attain a visa to enter UK. 
 
Office for National Statistics has estimated that due to changes, net migration is expected to reduce to half from a third 764,000 last year to 315, 000 in early 2028. 
 
Subsequently, the new Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said she will maintain the measures. 
 
The only measure that was listed, but never executed, was the proposal to increase the current £18,600 income requirement for a partner to join the UK to £38,700 next year. 
 
“It should not have come as a great surprise when Keir Starmer said we will bring net migration down even before the election; it was literally a statement of probability,” opined McNeil. 
 
Tax and the economy 
 
Amid Cooper’s enrapture to the Tories’ migration policies, in the No 11, Reeves savagely chainsawed through their economic strategy. 
 
The Chancellor had been careful in the lead up to the election to noticeably plant suggestions as to how the state of the economy could actually be still worse than hitherto estimated when Labour opened its accounts. Such a scenario would of course include the imposition of many unpopular taxes and reductions in spending. 
 
The prospect of worse news was confirmed last Monday by Reeves, and the pain that would arrive inevitably along with such news, but, she said emphatically, it would not be Labour’s doing. 
 
She had been taught a murderous political tactic from one of her predecessors none other than George Osborne who never hesitated to put all the blames of the 2008 crash on Gordon Brown. The cuts had to be made now, the most unpopular measures had to be implemented, while people would readily accept them because of the ‘former’ PM who ‘broke’ the economy. 
 
Nonetheless, the severity of the cutbacks imposed by the Chancellor was vehement, indeed far-reaching; surpassing the expectations of even her faction let alone her adversaries. Benn’s Alistair Darling on Monday during a 27 minuet statement removed the winter fuel allowance from nearly 10 million pensioner. 
 
Larger transport schemes were abruptly axed, and the promise that was made by Johnson to establish forty new hospitals was delayed. 
 
Then Rayner declared her discovery of the £10 billion needed to go for inflation outstripping award for millions of PS workers. 
 
The consequence of this was that optimisation of a expenditure reduction was not sufficient and, in a podcast interview after the statement, the Chancellor stated that taxes would rise. 
 
However its rates that will increase remain an empty and there is no information about which taxes they will be. 
 
Reeves has limited her own flexibility in a similar manner regarding the manifesto choices whereby she was willing not to increase VAT, income tax, national insurance or corporation tax. 
 
Collectively, those four levies account for three quarters of the taxes, and the Chancellor is left with a daunting challenge of how to get the billions needed when she presents her first budget on October 30. 
 
According to Paul Johnson, a director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, the Chancellor could go for the inheritance tax and capital gain-tax. Closing loopholes, however, “will yield you a few billions” but that, they stress, “is unlikely to be enough to turnaround the overall Budget. ” 
 
“It’s also quite uncertain how much you’d get from that and to some extent they’re a bit riskier in terms of raising the revenue,” he informed the Pod Save the UK podcast. 
 
“And the big picture stays the same; if you want to avoid more reductions of public services over the next couple of years and you stick to the borrowing schedule, which she has claimed is carved in stone, then taxes is going to have to go up. ” 
 
NHS and social care 
 
Still, a large segment of additional dollars that Reeves will need to earn is also going to be directed to healthcare — the demographic shears of the UK’s population boom and agglomerate for even higher costs. 
 
Before the election Wes Streeting, the new Health Secretary, positioned himself as a change-maker who will get the NHS back on track without spending a dime. 
 
However, since the Labour took the helm there has been almost no description of how the party intends to check the continuous growth of the health budget and enhance the functioning of the struggling NHS. 
 
However, the first step it has been able to make has been to award junior doctors a 22 per cent pay rise in an effort to put an end to the incessant strike that has grounded the NHS. 
 
Richard Sloggett, who set up the Future Health Research programme, said Streeting may be attempting to ‘‘wTranspose[referred to material]’’ the service’s staff in advance of potentially imminent changes to the service to be implemented early next year. 
 
“Where are we going to get this extra money you say? Well, where we’re heading to is in the budget on October 30 some of the more difficult decisions will have to be made as there isn’t going to be lots more money,” he supplied. 
 
“Of course, any reform of the NHS will always is going to be contentious simply because the very essence of the NHS reform is to always redistribute resources from one group to another group. It is not a process that is going to be without pain. ” 
 
Health London’s former head of policy, Streeting, prior to the election, stressed the concept of moving from curative to preventive paradigms in provision of health services. He also explained that he has plans to cut the number of Britons attending A&E by promoting the employment of GPs and community health besides being cheaper.

Labour has provided little substance on the social care plan apart from scrapping Boris Johnson’s pre-election plan to deliver the lifetime cap albeit at £86,000, which the party previously agreed to maintain. 
 
Other than the new wave of thanking people for voting for them on the basis of their promise to establish a new National Care Service, with unclear plans on how this new structure will function. 
 
Kimberley Scharf sums up some of the reactions where Sir Andrew Dilnot, who chaired a commission into social care ten years ago, was quoted to have said that he found it “quite frustrating and hugely disappointing” that Labour departed with the cap that he recommended. 
 
Chancellor, according to him, might reintroduce a similar plan of the health and social care levy that Johnson earlier presented to fund both the increase in the NHS budget and the limit on social care. 
 
“I don’t reckon the Labour party actually has a very clear set of plan at the moment as to what it’d like to do, so I reckon it’s all up for discussion,” Dilnot. 
 
Welfare 
 
Labour has recently made very desperate attempts to associate the difficulties in the NHS to the welfare costs, with worklessness emerging as one of the biggest risks to the UK. 
 
Those not economically active, meaning they are not employed or actively seeking employment, stands at 9 million. 4 million since the pandemic, that is nearly half a million more than in January 2020. 
 
Sunak had stated plans to curtail the abuse of sickness benefits especially to people with minor mental illnesses which form much of the increase. 
 
However, the new Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall seems to have changed her mind over the steps, which drew the ire of disability groups. 
 
She recently made her first major speech in office in Barnsley last month, but, alas, it contained scarce proposals beyond Labour’s intentions of eradicating NHS waiting lists. 
 
The recently formed Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has stated that enhancements to the health service will make only a ‘modest adjustment in unemployment rates. 
 
“Her virtue at the moment is disturbingly passive: She is silent on the difficult decisions which are indeed required in government,” said one ex Tory adviser after the Kendall’s speech. 
 
“They still seem to be treating welfare as if they are in opposition on the matter. ” 
 
In the past Kendall has voiced support for a suite of previous Tory measures which the OBR has given a score to and written into spending estimates. 
 
This includes plans for change in Work Capability Assessment which would reduce the limited circumstances, that an individual is entitled to incapacity benefits, hence fewer claimants. How is Labour to find the £3 billion which that policy saved, if she throws it out? 
 
In the same vein, the Tories intended to to alter Personal Independence Payments – an additional disability benefit – to restrict access for people with mental illnesses. 
 
The previous government of Britain planned to reform the sick note procedure to help more people get back into employment; it was to also scrap GPs’ role of issuing the papers. 
 
Thus it remains in the unknown how much benefits will increase under Labour a party that has in the past approved of higher increases. 
 
Autumn will be a turning point for Reeves; he will have to raise the welfare payments by inflation rates or be more sympathetic and link the rise to the average earnings rates. 
 
Net Zero 
 
Concerns are raised over the feasibility of the Net Zero policy proclaimed by Ed Miliband, and, in particular, the promises to twin the dekarbonisation of the grid by 2030 and the end of sales of cars powered by petrol and diesel. They once aimed to get two thirds of the grid’s electricity from décarbonisé sources by 2035 as they delayed the ban of selling petrol and diesel driven cars to the same year. 
 
The very Tony Blair Institute, a policy suggestion center led by the ex- Labour Prime Minister, and also, a political opponent, has stated that Miliband’s constant focus on ‘renewables may hike energy prices’. 
 
In a paper it published in May it cautioned that going overboard in slashing emissions could cause “major economic and social impacts on the country”. 
 
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has stated that UK companies were diametric when it came to Labour’s policies regarding the reinstatement of a ban on new sales of petrol cars by 2030, however, it has also highlighted the fact that there was still much unknown about Starmer’s plan. “This always could be taken as the devil being in the detail,” Mike Hawes, chief executive of the body. “Is that the absolutely final nail in the coffin for anything that has a tailpipe? Inquiring minds want to know. ” 
 
“Or is there is an element of leeway that could accommodate change in technologies like the plug in hybrids? If it was a very rigid [plan] then a lot of manufacturers would find it hard to meet that within the time set and that would not be good for the consumer. ” 
 
Unknown unknowns 
 
A former US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld once famously summed up the uncertainty of the war through the following trichotomy; the knowns, known unknowns and the unknowns. 
 
The toughest were those that the man classified as the third type – the ones that are not only unforeseen, but not even considered at all. But as Sir Keir writes memos on his one month anniversary in No 10, he will know that, actually, it is all three.