6 things UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to fix in his first month

4 months ago 2

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LONDON — The message was clear in Keir Starmer’s first speech as U.K. prime minister. “The work of change begins immediately.”

Starmer, elected after a landslide election victory on July 4, has promised to “rebuild” a country which voted en masse for a change in direction amid widespread public anger over ailing public services and a stuttering economy.

Massive issues facing the new government include boosting economic growth, reforming the social care system, and finding new funding for local authorities. But just a few days into the job, six topics have emerged as immediate priorities for PM Starmer.

Immigration

Starmer has already confirmed he will immediately junk his Tory predecessor Rishi Sunak’s flagship immigration policy of deporting asylum seekers to the African nation of Rwanda, a strategy that was recently cemented in law after facing a series of challenges in the courts. The scheme cost British taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds, without a single person being deported.

Starmer told journalists at his first press conference after entering No. 10 Downing Street that “the Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started” and had “never been a deterrent” to would-be migrants as it would only ever have deported “less than 1 percent” of those arriving across the English Channel on small boats.

But the issue has been given new urgency by the huge number of Brits who voted for Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party, which came third in the popular vote in last Thursday’s election.

Former Labour PM Tony Blair called on Starmer to grasp the nettle right away in order to stem the tide of right-wing populism seen in other countries such as France, arguing in the Sunday Times for the introduction of digital ID cards. “If we don’t have rules, we get prejudices,” he warned.

Labour has already pledged to curb small boats crossing the Channel by launching a new border security command, which is expected to take shape in the coming days as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper appoints its commander.

A Border Security Bill will feature in Starmer’s first King’s Speech, a set-piece parliamentary moment pencilled in for July 17 when the PM sets out his legislative program for the coming year. The bill will give authorities new counterterrorism powers to tackle organized crime and people-smuggling.

NHS strikes

Health Secretary Wes Streeting arrived with a sharp message for Britain’s creaking health service, telling his new department that all officials should regard the NHS as “broken.”

Streeting spoke to the British Medical Association (BMA), which represents thousands of NHS medics, in the immediate aftermath of Labour’s election victory and said he wanted to restart talks in an attempt to end a long-running pay dispute with junior doctors. The BMA has led a series of strikes over its demand for a 35 percent pay rise to make up for what it says are 15 years of below-inflation hikes.

Starmer has already stated his government is not prepared to meet the BMA’s terms, but he pledged “there will be grown-up politics where we actually resolve issues and get our NHS back working.”

The prime minister also told journalists his team had spoken to two NHS trusts to discuss how the party can deliver its election pledge of an additional 40,000 appointments, scans and operations a week.

The Labour leadership knows that repairing the NHS is another front on which the government will be judged from day 1, ranking either level with or narrowly behind the economy in polls of voters’ top concerns.

Starmer may call for reinforcements from the Blair era. The Telegraph reported he will recruit a former health secretary, Alan Milburn, to help bring NHS waiting lists down.

Prisons crisis

The prisons system in England and Wales is close to breaking point, with the latest official figures showing 87,453 spaces are occupied out of a total of 88,864.

The crisis was identified before the election by Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, as one of the biggest immediate problems Labour would have to address on entering office.

Labour has already committed to keeping the previous Conservative government’s early-release scheme in place to ease levels of overcrowding, and plans to revamp planning laws (more on that below) to make it faster to build new prisons.

More controversially, the PM has also promised to undertake a review of sentencing. One of Starmer’s first appointments over the weekend was James Timpson as prisons minister; Timpson is a businessman who runs a chain of key-cutting shops which employ and assist ex-offenders. He has criticized the efficacy of prisons in the past.

Starmer gave his partial backing to those views on Saturday, saying it was a “massive problem” that many people who are released end up back in jail “relatively quickly afterwards.”

While details of Labour’s sentencing review have not been spelled out yet, Timpson may find himself facing the same quandary as a series of prisons ministers under the Conservatives who wanted to cut reoffending but were ultimately stymied by the need to look tough on law and order.

Cracking down on antisocial behavior is one of Labour’s “six steps for change,” which is tied to the promise of “tough new penalties for offenders.” This will not be an easy nut for Starmer to crack.

Planning reform

An overhaul of the planning system will be a central plank of the King’s Speech after Starmer pledged to rebuild Britain “brick by brick.”

Labour has promised to get major infrastructure projects moving much faster by redefining what is “nationally significant” and rewriting so-called national policy statements, with the intention of making it harder for local authorities to block development.

Starmer’s winning manifesto also committed to building 1.5 million new homes over the next parliament, focused on using brownfield sites as well as the “grey belt” — scrubland on the outskirts of British towns or disused petrol stations that have been officially designated green belt.

Planning liberalization has historically been one of the most intractable challenges faced by successive U.K. housing secretaries, who have all encountered fierce opposition from MPs worried about local opposition to new development once the changes reach parliament.

But Labour will be empowered by its enormous majority in the House of Commons and the fact it was elected on a platform of getting Britain building. Expect radical change in the days ahead.

Relations with nations and regions

The new prime minister has immediately embarked on a tour of Britain’s devolved nations to seek a “reset” of relations with the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Discussing the four-nations tour at his press conference Saturday, Starmer said he wanted not just to meet the first ministers to discuss the challenges they face, but “to establish a way of working across the United Kingdom that will be different and better to the way of working that we’ve had in recent years.”

In Scotland he faces the task of establishing a constructive working relationship with a normally hostile Scottish National Party administration now very much on the back foot after suffering dramatic losses at Labour’s hands in last Thursday’s election, amid ongoing tensions between the two parties over taxes on fossil-fuel companies and transgender rights.

Starmer’s party may be rejoicing at the total wipeout of all Welsh Conservative MPs in the election, but Labour remains under fierce pressure to address NHS difficulties in Wales. Meanwhile, the Labour first minister, Vaughan Gething, is under a cloud since losing a confidence vote over donations to his leadership campaign.

When Starmer arrives in Belfast he will underline Labour’s intention to scrap the Conservatives’ Legacy Act, which ended all criminal and civil cases connected to Northern Ireland’s 1968-1998 civil conflict and is hated by all parties there. The so-called Irish Sea border — trade barriers between Britain and Northern Ireland created by Boris Johnson’s 2019 Brexit agreement — is likely to be on the agenda as well, with Labour vowing to reduce border friction for businesses.

Starmer will also meet metro mayors across England — all but one of whom are now drawn from the Labour Party — in advance of his plans for greater regional devolution, expected as one of the meatier items to feature in the King’s Speech. But he will face uncomfortable questions over local government finance, with as many as 200 local authorities currently on the verge of going bust.

EU relations

After years of tension and acrimony between the U.K. and its European neighbors over the terms and legacy of Brexit, Starmer has indicated his intention to open a new chapter of relations with the European Union.

The new PM told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a phone call shortly after taking office that he wanted “greater economic cooperation,” while a separate call with French President Emmanuel Macron covered “shared priorities, including migration and the economy.”

U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy made his first overseas visit to Berlin barely 24 hours after being sworn in, declaring that “it’s time to reset our relationship with our European friends and allies.”

His comments were echoed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who told Starmer that she looked forward to meeting in person to discuss ways to “strengthen cooperation and reset the relationship” between the U.K. and the EU.

High on the agenda is Labour’s stated ambition of negotiating a veterinary agreement with the bloc in a bid to smooth trade and reduce border friction for businesses.

Simon Harris, Ireland’s taoiseach, said Sunday that the EU is “absolutely” open to discussing an overhaul of the post-Brexit trading relationship.

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