Keir Starmer has unveiled six commitments which, he said, would constitute the first steps taken by a Labour government. The Labour leader was reluctant to use the word “pledge”, but the six statements inevitably drew comparisons with Tony Blair’s 1997 pledge card.
Unlike Labour’s promises going into that election, however, the steps Starmer outlined were generally vague and their success is likely to prove difficult to measure.
Deliver economic stability
Labour has an ambitious policy on the economy: to deliver the highest sustained growth in the G7. Interestingly, this is not the commitment that made it on to the poster for Starmer’s event on Thursday.
Instead the party is prioritising the more cautious and vague “economic stability” – a pledge that highlights the volatility caused by Liz Truss’s tenure in Downing Street, but the success of which will be much harder to judge.
Labour frontbenchers are locked in debates over whether the party should prioritise economic stability if it gets into power, or push for growth, perhaps with higher spending and lower taxes. The fact that stability made it on to the pledge card shows which way Starmer is leaning.
Cut NHS waiting times
Cutting NHS waiting times might sound like a vague promise, but it refers to 14 different targets the health service is currently missing, and in some cases has never hit.
The promises include one to make sure ambulances respond to the most serious incidents within seven minutes, compared with the current average of eight minutes. Labour is also promising that 95% of people visiting A&E will be seen and either transferred or discharged within four hours – far above the current figure of 74%.
Another pledge says 96% of cancer patients will wait one month or less between a doctor deciding they need treatment and the treatment starting. At the moment that is true for only 91% of patients.
Launch a new border security command
When launching his missions last year, Starmer received some criticism for not including one on migration. Since then Rishi Sunak has sought to put the issue at the heart of his pre-election pitch to voters by relaunching the government’s plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Labour has promised to scrap the Rwanda scheme and to use the savings to pay for a new border security command, staffed with hundreds of additional special investigators, intelligence agents and cross-border police officers. Labour wants to focus on prosecuting people smugglers who help bring migrants across the Channel, rather than on deporting those who arrive here.
Unlike Sunak’s promise to completely stop small boat crossings, Starmer is only promising to set up the border command. He has not said how its success should be judged.
Set up Great British Energy
Starmer’s original promise to spend £28bn a year on green investment has been whittled down to less than £15bn. The largest portion of that money will be spent creating a green energy company known as Great British Energy, which allies of the shadow energy secretary, Ed Miliband, say was the most important aspect of the original promise.
Labour has promised to set up the company in Scotland within its first 100 days in power, with a mandate to invest in clean energy schemes. Its initial focus will be on cutting-edge technologies that private sector investors might deem too risky, and community energy schemes that they might deem too small.
Setting up the company will be the easy part. Labour is also promising the country will have zero-carbon electricity by 2030, which will prove harder and more expensive to achieve.
Crack down on antisocial behaviour
Labour does have a measurable target on tackling crime – to halve serious violent crime and raise confidence in the police to its highest level. But this is not the pledge that appears on posters across the country.
Instead, the party has decided to prioritise a far vaguer crackdown on antisocial behaviour. Labour has promised a range of measures, including “respect orders” for adults who repeatedly commit antisocial behaviour, introducing youth mentors and mental health professionals in schools, and new penalties for fly-tippers.
Tackling antisocial behaviour is likely to prove far easier than solving some of the more entrenched problems in the criminal justice system, given prison and court capacity is almost non-existent and can only be improved with large amounts of extra money.
Recruit 6,500 teachers
Starmer’s education pledge is the only one to which there is an actual figure attached. The party has promised to recruit 6,500 more teachers, which it will pay for by using the money it generates through increasing taxes on private schools.
Labour does not say how quickly it will recruit the extra teachers. If it intends to do so in the first year of government, this is a high target, but not unprecedented. From 2021-22 to 2022-23, the number of full-time equivalent teaching posts in schools rose by 2,844. Two years earlier, as the country came out of the pandemic, the number of teaching posts rose by 7,285.
Recruiting more teachers might prove difficult in the short term if pay across the sector does not rise, something Labour will be reluctant to allow given the public sector funding constraints.
