New year, new Keir? Labor has big plans for 2025 – including taking inspiration from Thatcher | Keir Starmer

AAs his government’s popularity has plummeted in recent weeks, Keir Starmer has turned up the pressure on his ministers. Since the start of last month, secretaries of state have been summoned by the Prime Minister to attend 90-minute individual interrogations to check their work, department by department.

Starmer officials insist no one in Downing Street or Whitehall is panicking. Not yet, anyway. But just six months after his landslide general election victory, the meetings reflect a sense of urgency and unease, and evidence that the harsh realities of government have emerged.

Economic growth has stalled and the country’s public services are desperately short of money. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ mega-budget last October provided them with more, but without growth returning the prospects for repeated additional injections look bleak. The British economy is unable to operate at full capacity after Brexit, outside the EU’s single market and customs union.

And Donald Trump’s return to the White House threatens a global trade war that could trigger serious economic repercussions here. Meanwhile, conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine continue. The Labor government has nothing positive to say so far.

Starmer has rejected the idea of ​​another major defining speech to revive himself and his premiership at the start of the new political year. “It’s deliberate. I don’t think in the modern era it works,” said a No 10 insider close to Starmer. “It’s not like the whole country is huddled in front of the TV waiting to hear from Keir what happens this year.”

Instead, Starmer is pushing his ministers to deliver and stand up for big changes and far-reaching reforms. He wants to know in detail how they plan to deliver on Labour’s commitments to the British people to revolutionize the NHS, control small boat arrivals, improve schools and raise living standards, in time for voters feel the benefits before the next general election. election.

“These are quite intense sessions with the ministers,” said a member of the government. “He wants to know how accurately they plan to deliver.” With the NHS at or near the top of voters’ priorities, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, was first questioned by Starmer early last month. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson also had her turn. Others will follow.

There are fears in Downing Street that 2025 is too soon to produce visible green shoots of recovery, economic or otherwise. Apart from some planned reductions in NHS waiting times, there may be little other data to show things are improving.

So what should be the government’s overall message?

The response coming from Downing Street appears, in part, to be based on the teachings of a former Prime Minister. An adviser to a minister said: “Margaret Thatcher was unpopular at first. So look what happened. She had a long-term agenda that people could see she was implementing. We must stay focused on ours.

Another government source added: “What we you must not do It is allowing current unpopularity to make us lose our composure, to make us afraid to make major reforms. Because only by implementing big reforms will we break out of the cycle, reduce NHS waiting lists, improve living standards and make progress in areas such as small boats.

However, it won’t be easy to keep their cool. Starmer’s personal ratings have collapsed with extraordinary speed in recent months, as has his party’s lead in pre-election polls, as Nigel Farage and Reform UK have surged. Elon Musk, the Trump-supporting billionaire who is reportedly willing to make a large donation to the Reform Party, appears determined to attack Starmer at every turn, saying Friday that he was once “complicit in the rape of Great Britain.” Brittany.”

“We are living in particularly febrile political times,” said a ministerial source, somewhat uneasily.

What Labor staff fear is that Starmer will struggle to shed his image as uninspiring and unimpressive. They fear it won’t stick. A few weeks before the legislative elections on July 4, its ratings were still positive, at +2%. But just before Christmas, an Opinium poll for the Observer put him at a disastrous -32%, with only 22% approving of his performance and 54% disapproving.

His team says they are unfazed. “I think Keir draws a parallel with the early days of his tenure, when he had to tackle an unpopular reform of the party and was criticized for not saying more about policy. He’s OK with the unpopularity, the criticism and the noise around the election. He knows he has to do the hard work and get through this period,” says a source.

On Monday, Starmer and Streeting will announce major reforms aimed at reducing NHS waiting lists and giving patients greater choice over where they can receive treatment. At the heart of the plans will be improvements to the NHS app, which will soon be able to show test results to patients. GPs will be paid to consult specialists on their patients’ problems rather than referring them to hospital outpatient departments. The goal is that people can be treated in the community rather than congesting the hospital system.

Streeting says he wants working-class patients to have the same choices as wealthy people who pay for private care. “If the rich can choose where and when they are treated, then working-class patients should be able to too, and this government will give them that choice,” he said.

The government has a busy agenda for 2025. When it comes to education, ministers are focused on increasing school attendance and retaining more teachers. They will also start introducing free breakfast clubs to all primary schools – one of the party’s most eye-catching pledges in the general election. Ministers have promised to build 1.5 million new homes this parliamentary term and will soon introduce a planning and infrastructure bill that will give central government the power to bypass local councils to speed up development. It is also accelerated decentralization, giving more powers to local mayors so they can better adapt services such as transport to local needs.

In Parliament, Labor has a large majority and the unrest among its MPs has not yet surfaced. However, this could change. More than half of Starmer’s MPs have a majority of 20% or less and could be reluctant if they feel they have nothing to sell on their doorstep. The party won around 100 seats in rural areas, most by narrow margins, meaning it now has to cater to a class of voters it could previously largely ignore. Plans to build new homes and entire new towns in rural areas won’t be an easy sell to voters in those areas, on top of the inflammatory inheritance taxes imposed on farmers in Reeves’ recent budget.

In the land of voters, it’s easy to understand why the polls are looking this way. On Friday in Swindon, one of the flagship towns where Labor won two seats from the Conservatives last July by relatively narrow majorities, the omens were mixed to say the least. Bread-and-butter issues were top of mind for shoppers thronging the city’s pedestrianized shopping district of chain pubs, vape shops and fast food outlets.

Steve Clarke, 49, was out with his 13-year-old daughter, who needed her phone repaired. He voted Labor in July, helping to turn both city constituencies red; Swindonians had elected Conservative MPs for the previous 14 years. But now he feels life is getting harder, not easier, for disabled parents like him.

“Electricity and gas prices are increasing this month,” he said, rubbing his hands in the cold. “It killed me when they put it online last time. Why can’t the government do something about this? In (Labour’s) manifesto, that was one of the things he said he wanted to address. Yeah, that’s true.

Clarke, who has lived in Swindon all his life, said he couldn’t afford to turn up the thermostat. “I barely had the heating on that whole Christmas. I’m just sitting there with blankets. It’s disgusting.”

He was not the only recent convert to attack the government. “We needed a change,” said Janina Tomlin, 72, who voted Labor for the first time last year. But she said the Government had “alienated a lot of people” with the reduction in the winter fuel allowance. “Bus fares have increased. And I would like them to stop saying that this deficit comes from the Conservatives… It’s been six months since they… they have to get started.

Other Labor voters wanted to give the government more time. “They’re doing well, but it’s a difficult starting point. (Labor) has a lot of things to fix before things get better,” said Andrea Sim, 48, who was with her family.

Her husband, Neil Sim, 50, said it was too early to judge. “Five or six months is not long enough to see real change, especially from where they started: they inherited a big smoking pile.”