Week 1
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Starmer’s first seven days as prime minister will be dominated by formalities such as receiving an invitation from the King to form a government, being sworn in as re-elected MPs and appointing a new cabinet.
Most of the senior jobs in government have already been filled, but some decisions will be made about junior shadow ministers who may not get their posts.
But the Green Party’s Carla Denier ousted shadow culture secretary Thangam Devonaire in Bristol Central and the shock defeat of the shadow budget chancellor in Leicester South to pro-Palestinian candidate Shoukat Adam will force Starmer to at least make tweaks to his top team.
There are also indications that veteran campaign executives such as Pat McFadden and Ellie Reeves could be promoted.
Labour insiders have spoken of plans for major reforms behind the scenes in Whitehall in the form of a new departmental committee, overseen by chief of staff Sue Gray, which is designed to bring together cross-government and private organisations in line with Mr Starmer’s five “missions”.
Sir Keir will travel to Washington on Tuesday for the NATO summit, his first overseas trip as prime minister. The summit, hosted by US President Joe Biden, will be his first opportunity to meet world leaders and receive a warm welcome.
Foreign affairs is a big part of the prime minister’s job and many of the Labour leader’s plans for government will depend on both cooperation with international partners and overseas investment in the UK, making early relationships with global counterparts even more important.
The current issue of defense cooperation among NATO allies will only emphasize its importance.
Starmer’s government could face immediate difficulties if the far-right National Rally party wins France’s runoff elections on Sunday.
This, along with upcoming US elections later this year, pose diplomatic challenges for Sir Keir as well as affecting his plans to negotiate closer ties with the EU and potentially even causing economic disruption.
“Every government has to deal with a changing international situation,” said Jill Rutter of the Institute for Government.
“The French elections mean a period of stagnation in France and could have implications for Starmer’s government’s desire to re-establish ties with the EU, but any renegotiation of trading relations is always likely to be problematic.”
Next week, the UK will host the European Political Community summit.
Rutter said it remained to be seen what impact a Trump victory in November would have on the US and global economies as a whole, but that the effects could be felt in the UK as well.
The New Deal and the King’s Speech
The new Labour government will set out its legislative agenda in its first King’s Speech and Opening of Parliament on 17 July. The party has indicated it intends to shorten the summer recess so that the King’s Speech can be delivered in July before MPs go on holiday in August.
New legislation to give greater independence to the Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to be announced, as well as a centrepiece bill in Labour’s New Deal for Workers, aimed at strengthening workers’ rights.
Labour could also use the opportunity to introduce legislation focused on reforming town planning laws to allow for more housing and infrastructure to be built.
The party also needs to bring forward legislation for the Great British Energy (GBE) scheme. Ed Miliband, who will become Energy Secretary, has previously said he wants to quickly ease regulations on onshore wind farms, and Sir Keir has said he wants to move forward with the party’s plans for setting up GBE as quickly as possible.
But Paul Johnson, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said the party may first need to clarify exactly what role the GBE will play.
“I think it’s very unclear, including to industry participants, what the GBE will actually be,” he said. “What we’ll be looking at in the first 100 days is the details of what the GBE will look like, what resources it has, what it was trying to accomplish, what resources it was trying to bring in from the private sector.”
He said this would be facilitated by accessing the “expertise and resources of the entire civil service” that the party has previously lacked.
Labour will also introduce legislation to tackle anti-social behaviour and child exploitation as part of its plans to tackle drug-related crime, as well as potentially set up a promised parliamentary integrity and ethics committee.
IFG’s Rutter argued that Labour’s decision to announce many of its big policy interventions early on before the election meant the party could consult widely on how to proceed with them, allowing it to make further progress at an early stage.
“They appear to be better prepared than many new governments, but they will want to refine and test their plans when they are in power and will also be able to take advice from government officials. Labor recognises that these are primarily long-term plans for reform over the life of this parliament’s term.”
And some of the policy areas the party wants to move forward don’t necessarily require new legislation – Sir Keir has promised to scrap the Rwanda scheme and start work on NHS waiting lists on his first day in office, for example.
Urgent questions will arise in the first few weeks about how the new administration will tackle prison overcrowding, teacher shortages and an ongoing strike by junior doctors.
Wes Streeting, the new health secretary, needs to fast-track talks with the British Medical Association to reach an agreement quickly and avoid industrial action that could ruin plans to end NHS delays.
“Will the new administration actually increase engagement among NHS staff?” Mr Johnson said. “There are some things that could make a big difference.”
“One of the key things the new Government will have to do is develop departmental budgets for 2025-2026 and through these support local government, and tackle a lot of the public service issues that were not addressed head on and adequately in either of the major party manifestos, such as prison capacity,” he added.
Party Congress and Budget
The summer break will take up about a third of the government’s first 100 days, and MPs will be the first to call for a break, but when Labour returns to power in September for its first parliamentary term, the first thing on the calendar will be the annual party conference.
This will be the first election to see Labour in power since 2009, and it will be a chance for them to continue the momentum of their election victory – and we may even see some surprise policy announcements.
Another big choice will be deciding when to hold the first Budget and Spending Review, which outlines funding for the government department and on which the implementation of policies such as VAT on private school fees depends.
New Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said she would give the OBR at least 10 weeks’ notice to make projections before drawing up her first Budget, so no emergency fiscal event is expected in the summer – meaning no earlier than mid-September.
But Mr Johnson said he would advise the party to postpone until November, after the conference, to allow time for any difficult decisions the party may have to make over public spending.
“We know that they have to make spending allocations for next year’s budget by the end of the year and they have the option of doing a three-year spending review or a council-wide review, which has the advantage of providing certainty and direction,” he said.
“The downside is that you have to make very big choices very quickly over a long period of time.”
He said he doesn’t expect any new cuts, but that substantial spending cuts are already priced in and tough decisions will have to be made about which departments will receive extra funding at the expense of others.
But it said it could be helped by a better-than-expected outlook and stronger growth rates.
“We might get lucky in terms of economic growth,” he says, “but when it comes to things like spending reviews, and choices between local government and early childhood education, education and the justice system, […] “We know the broad strokes of how the cuts were made, but when you get into the finer details of how much worse it would be if we actually allocated just 1 percent to local government and 5 percent to the judiciary, or vice versa, that really requires fine-grained analysis.”
2024 Election
The general election campaign is over, and on voting day the Labour Party won a landslide victory over Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party.
Sir Keir Starmer and other party leaders have been fighting for votes for six weeks, IOur election live blog covered all the election results live, with leading Conservative candidates from Penny Mordaunt to Grant Shapps suffering heavy defeats, while Jeremy Corbyn won in Islington North.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK also performed better than expected, winning four MPs.
But if Labour wins, what happens next? IReports on new Prime Minister Starmer’s future actions.