Will Keir Starmer succeed in delivery, delivery, delivery?

Phase one – fixing the foundations – is, according to No.10, complete. Phase two now begins. 

As the autumn term begins, Keir Starmer has restructured No.10 once again. This time he has said his aim is to equip the centre of government for a “relentless focus on delivery”, appointing Treasury minister Darren Jones to the newly-created role of chief secretary to the prime minister, recruiting a new executive director of communications, and appointing a new economic adviser, alongside other No.10 job moves. 

After a difficult summer for the government, with constant headlines about small-boat arrivals and asylum hotels, there will be plenty more tricky issues for the government to navigate this autumn. Starmer needs his new team to cohere rapidly and shift the government machine into delivery mode.

The government must move from strategy to delivery

The government’s first announcements as Parliament returned demonstrated Labour’s appreciation of the need to respond to the increasing salience of immigration issues, successfully pushed up the political agenda over the recess by Reform UK. Ahead of Nigel Farage’s party’s conference on Friday, both the prime minister and the home secretary Yvette Cooper made immigration-related announcements – suspending refugee family reunion and bringing forward a commitment to close asylum hotels. 

The government is painfully aware of the need to demonstrate visible progress on the issue of immigration, but also that immigration is far from the only controversial issue where the public is looking for change. Across government, the key theme of discussions among politicians and officials is how to convert the various strategies already published and those due to be published this autumn (which include SEND reform, child poverty and policing), as well as the conclusions of recent independent reviews (including Leveson, Gauke and Cunliffe), into concrete delivery. Convincing the public that the government is making improvements in their lives by achieving perceptible progress towards the milestones set out in its Plan for Change is seen as the priority now ahead of the next election.  

Legislation is necessary but not sufficient

Some of the government’s manifesto commitments require legislation to deliver. On this front the government is making reasonable progress. Confirmation that the first session of this Parliament will run until spring 2026 means that the government has given itself time to complete its first tranche of legislation. A long first session is not unusual for a first term government with a full programme of bills to draft from scratch, and Labour has introduced almost all of the legislation it announced in the King’s Speech. Nonetheless, delays in the passage of major bills through the Lords – including tactics from Conservative peers to prolong the passage of the hereditary peers bill – mean the extra time will certainly be necessary and the Lords in particular will be very busy. And passing legislation is not the same as delivering change on the ground.

Rachel Reeves needs to balance the Budget

The major political event of the autumn will be the budget. Until that arrives – 10 weeks from when the government gives notice to the OBR – feverish speculation will continue about the size of the fiscal black hole created by policy U-turns and the likely downgrade to the economic and fiscal forecast, and how Rachel Reeves will choose to fill it. With an increase in government borrowing seeming unfeasible, spending plans only just set out in the June Spending Review, and very recent evidence of the difficulty of making benefit cuts, this leaves tax rises as the most likely answer. Whatever she decides, Reeves’s key aspiration must be to extract herself from a cycle of fiscal firefighting – being buffeted from one forecast revision to another. 

In the context of the black hole, the challenge of improving public services will be increased by the need to manage demands for higher pay from public sector staff, resolve the resident doctors strike, deal with backbench calls for additional spending commitments, manage the abolition of NHS England and the merging of its functions into DHSC, implement Fair Pay Agreements for adult social care and manage the impact of local government reorganisation.

Transferring delivery apparatus from the Cabinet Office into No.10 appears to be an acknowledgement that the mission machinery has failed to facilitate the cross-departmental working needed to genuinely enable joint delivery. What this No10 reorganisation means for the missions concept is not clear, but Starmer knows he will soon need to show progress on his priorities.

Whether the foundations have been entirely fixed or not, the government’s ‘phase one’ has not impressed the public – at least if the polls are a guide. If phase two – the delivery phase – is to be any different, then the prime minister needs the latest No.10 reorganisation to deliver for him.