Keir Starmer has unveiled his ‘plan for change’. But can Labour really turn Britain around?

Prime minister Keir Starmer has unveiled his six key milestones for this parliament – promising to haul Britain out of the “tepid bathtub of managed decline”.

The goals – which the government wants to achieve by the next election in spring 2029 – include building 1.5 million homes, bringing NHS waitlists down and delivering clean power by 2030. Higher living standards, safer streets and school readiness targets round out the list.

The path for change is “long and hard”, Starmer told reporters this morning (5 December), but pledged that “we will stick to it”.

“We face an almighty challenge to hit these milestones by the end of this parliament,” he said. “[But] what is the point of setting a target that you can deliver without bold action? That’s not public service, that’s political cynicism.”

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The British electorate are accustomed to pithy numerical targets. Since 2022, we’ve been promised Rishi Sunak’s ‘five pledges’, Labour’s ‘five key missions’ and Starmer’s ‘six first steps’.

But listicle-fatigue aside, today’s announcement is undeniably significant, because it set out the government’s priorities for the next five years.

The Institute for Government has welcomed the new metrics, describing them as “necessary and overdue”. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) echoed this approval – but stressed that the prime minister will be judged on his ability to fulfil these pledges.

“Today’s milestones must be the start of a decade of national renewal,” said Harry Quilter-Pinner, IPPR’s interim executive director. “Meeting them will make a real difference in peoples’ lives. But they must be the starting point, not the destination. After more than a decade of austerity and stagnation, Britain needs transformative change not incremental improvement.”

So what is in the government’s reform agenda? Let’s dig into the detail.

What are Keir Starmer’s six policy milestones?

The targets build on previous policy aims, but they are more specific.

Raising living standards in every region of the country

The exact metric the government will use to measure this is yet unclear, but it will involve raising disposable income. Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB trade union, “welcomed” the commitment – urging that it be prioritised alongside workers’ rights.

“Working people need to feel more money in their pockets and government needs to deliver the changes this country so desperately needs,” he said.

“That must mean delivering on employment rights and ending low pay by delivering the government’s plan to make work pay in full.”

But other advocates called for a more granular appraisal of living costs. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation‘s principal policy adviser Abby Jitendra warned that the government’s living standards metric would fail if it fails to take into account rising rental costs.

“Households in the bottom 40% of incomes face being around £450 worse off in 2029 than they are right now,” she said. “And yet housing costs, a major part of this pressure, are not properly reflected in the government’s measure. This risks the spreadsheet showing one thing, but families feeling something very different. “

Building 1.5 million homes

The government will also aim to commission 150 infrastructure projects: including wind farms, reservoirs and rail lines.

Keir Starmer described this pledge as “a clear message to the Nimbys [not in my backyard], blockers and naysayers.”

Previously, the housing target was welcomed by advocates in the sector – but there must be a focus on social housing.

“If this government truly wants to deliver the biggest increase in social house building in a generation, any new planning legislation must be focussed on delivering 90,000 social rent homes a year,” Shelter chief executive Polly Neate said earlier this year. “Private developers will not deliver the target 1.5m homes by themselves – councils need the means to build genuinely affordable homes too.”

Putting more police on the beat

Recruiting 13,000 police officers, special constables and PCSOs to “stamp out anti-social behaviour in every community”.

The 13,000 extra officers include only 3,000 fully-warranted police. The rest will be community support officers (PCSOs) and volunteer special constables.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch slammed the PM’s speech as an “emergency reset and accused them of misleading the public on police numbers.

Getting kids ‘school-ready’

The government aims to ensure that 75% of children are “school-ready” by reception year, both socially and educationally.

Natalie Perera – chief executive at the Education Policy Institute – welcomed this initiative but questioned why the government didn’t focus on educational inequality.

“We would expect the proportion of children reported to be achieving a good level of development to increase year-on-year in any case. The more important measure in an opportunity-led mission to reduce the gap between disadvantaged and vulnerable children and their peers.

“Improving outcomes for disadvantaged children also requires a relentless drive to bring down child poverty and to provide families with early support. The focus on family hubs and learning lessons about what worked from the Sure Start programme is an important element of today’s announcement.”

A child poverty strategy is necessary to do so: the government has come under fire for failing to lift the “cruel” two child benefit limit.

Responding to today’s speech, JRF’s Abby Jitendra called on the government to increase universal credit and scrap the two-child rule.

“The government’s priority should be to transform the life chances of disadvantaged families first, making sure childcare and early education are good quality and affordable for them,” she said.

Decarbonising the electricity grid by 2030

To achieve this goal, Labour will need to triple the UK’s solar power capacity, double onshore wind capacity and quadruple offshore wind capacity.

The National Energy System Operator (NESO) – the government’s independent system planner for the energy transition – recently described the 2030 clean power goal as “possible” but “at the limit of what is feasible”.

Treating 92% of NHS patients within 18 weeks of referral.

The NHS is the number one issue for many voters. However, hospital leaders are sceptical about the new targets: A recent survey by the hospitals body NHS Providers found that 71% of trust leaders thought that they were unlikely, a figure that rose to 100% of those who run acute and ambulance trusts.

The Liberal Democrats have accused Keir Starmer of neglecting GPs. “It was worrying to see no clear plan in these targets to make sure people can see a GP when they need to. Pledging to bring down waiting lists while neglecting GP services is like robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said.

Why is the government unveiling its targets now?

Labour are also hoping that the announcement will bring the public back onside. An Ipsos poll out overnight shows that 53% of the public are “disappointed” with what Labour has done in government so far and – ominously – that’s reflected across each mission. Only 22% said Labour is doing a good job on the NHS.

Part of Keir Starmer’s speech was directed at the civil service – explicitly setting out the priorities for his parliament and “throwing down the gauntlet” for Whitehall officials.

“I do think that too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline,” Starmer said. “I totally get that when trust in politics is so low, we must be careful about the promises we make. But across Whitehall and Westminster, that’s been internalised as a ‘don’t say anything. Don’t try anything too ambitious.’ Then they wonder why working people no longer believe that politics can make a real difference to their lives.”

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