‘If Labour achieves its six milestones, it will have a proud record. The challenge is meeting them’

Consider these six statements.

• Our disposable income has increased faster than the cost of living
• Our family can access the NHS when we need it
• Our children are reaching school ready to learn
• Our neighbourhood is safe and the police are there for us
• Our electricity is made without harm to the environment or threats from dictators
• Our community has enough homes for the next generation

These are the big ideas baked into the six milestones Labour announced today. They are things people cannot reliably say today that they will be able to by the next election, if the targets are achieved.

Clearly ministers believe these are issues that will help sway future electoral decisions. We can be sure there is an awful lot of voter research lying behind the milestones they have picked. The six priorities are calibrated to hold together Labour’s tricky voter coalition: some matter more than others to the different social groups and different places the party will need to convince again.

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But this is not narrow or cynical vote harvesting. These goals represent big things that really matter to people.

Ministers know that the key to re-election is demonstrating competence and delivering change the public can feel. It is not a choice of re-election or transforming the country because the two go hand in hand. Labour will be rewarded if the party promises and then delivers on priorities that are both ambitious and close to home.

Picking priorities

The key is to pick just a handful of goals and stick with them. This matters both to sustain media attention and, more importantly, to secure relentless focus within government. The previous iterations of Labour’s five ‘missions’ contained dozens of potential targets. The manifesto’s promises could have been turned into one hundred.

But to govern is to choose. The milestones published today do not cover everything, however if they are achieved they will represent a record of serious achievement on which Keir Starmer can seek re-election.

No doubt there will be secondary and supporting goals located elsewhere in government – lots of other things matter, from immigration to child poverty. However if everything is a top priority, nothing is.

Others might have chosen different targets if they had been in Starmer’s shoes, but no one can deny these are big ambitions.

Labour’s commitments on green energy and housebuilding were well-established in opposition, but that does not make them any less transformative. Indeed ministers have been bold to recommit to targets that many observers say are very hard to achieve.

Read more on Andrew Harrop’s Cradle to Grave blog.

They are what the management theorist Jim Collins once called Big Hairy Audacious Goals: deliberately hard ambitions that help to marshal efforts and focus minds. Just coming close to hitting these targets will be a huge success, considering where we are today; although in the unforgiving world of British politics, the media may not see it that way.

The party’s big economic pivot from GDP to living standards is also incredibly important. It comes in the wake of the Democrats’ drubbing in the USA and makes sense from an electoral standpoint. But more fundamentally, rising household living standards is the point of economic growth.

We need investment and exports and corporate profits. But they should be servants of the ultimate prize – rising household living standards in every part of the country, at every point in the income distribution.

And importantly a five-year focus on living standards leads to different policy solutions than a ten-year growth mission – such as more ambitious trade union rights, stronger employment support and more generous social security.

The announcement today that is most novel and inspiring is the milestone on early childhood. Starmer is making a major statement by asking to be judged on children’s readiness for school at five. No administration in history has made this a priority.

Improving child development outcomes will require improvements to early education, child health, parenting support and family incomes not just more hours of childcare. This could provide huge momentum for the government’s agendas on opportunity, prevention and child poverty.

Challenges lie ahead

I am a little less positive about the final two milestones. In the technocratic language of targets, governments can measure ‘inputs’, ‘outputs’ and ‘outcomes’. The four goals on living standards, homes, green power and readiness for school each track big society-wide outcomes. The goals on healthcare and crime are somewhat narrower.

The NHS target is for an output (ie. timely treatment) not an outcome (better health). But the logic is hard to fault. With the NHS on its knees, it is essential to get the healthcare basics right within five years, both substantively and politically.

This goal will also be very difficult to achieve and will force the pace on healthcare funding and reform. But there should also be a ten-year focus on increasing healthy life expectancy, slashing health inequalities and reducing unmet care needs. That will have to follow.

READ MORE: ‘Starmer’s ‘Plan for Change’ speech needs to deliver real solutions or face testing voters’ patience’

Meanwhile today’s new target on community policing is an ‘input’ and is the least impressive of the milestones. It is the promise that is most disconnected from the statement of change at the top of this article.

Every government seems to end up promising more ‘bobbies on the beat’, when success should be measured in terms of less crime, less fear of crime and higher confidence in the police and justice systems.

The government is right to want to be ambitious on crime and personal security. But this seems to be retreading ground Labour has been on for 25 years, rather than finding new ways to build communities’ feelings of security and confidence.

I end with some minor carping. But five out of six of these milestones really do encapsulate big change that will touch people’s lives. If Labour comes close to achieving them it will have a proud record on which to stand in 2029.

The challenge now is to reset government, business and society to make them happen.

Read more about the Plan for Change:

• What is Keir Starmer’s Plan for Change – and Labour’s six policy milestones?
• ‘Why Keir Starmer should embrace populism ahead of the next election’
• Plan for Change: ‘Voters will reward Labour in 2029 if Starmer fixes public services’
• Plan for Change: ‘If early years is key for the PM, we need a revamped Sure Start’
• Starmer poised to unveil ‘measurable milestones’ in Labour’s missions for government

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