Sir Keir Starmer to unveil ‘plan for change’ – what is it and why now?

Published

4 months ago

December 5, 2024

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After five months in power, even the most loyal cabinet members would quietly admit it’s been a rocky run for Sir Keir Starmer and Labour.

The prime minister’s personal polling ratings have tumbled from a +7 in the post-election honeymoon to -29 now.

Many pensioners, business owners, entrepreneurs and farmers are angry, and between the Downing Street power struggles that became front page news, rows over freebies and the first cabinet resignation, it can at times be hard to pinpoint what this government is about and trying to achieve.

Politics latest: Starmer comes under attack over ‘convicted fraudster’ ex-minister

Starmer won big in the summer but is struggling to punch through.

Thursday is a serious attempt to change that. Because this is when Sir Keir will give you, the voter, the nuts and bolts of what to expect in the first half of the ‘decade of renewal’ he has long talked about.

You will be getting a series of “mission milestones” from the prime minister to give you clear markers on which to measure this government and Whitehall – a sharp navigation tool for a government that has been somewhat buffeted by side winds since taking office.

From Thursday onwards the “plan for change” will be, as one person in the top team puts it, the Northern Star of Starmer’s first term in office.

What it looks like will be a checklist of what the government wants to achieve and when it comes to the next election day, you will be able to judge whether Labour have delivered or not.

The pledges will be hung around the missions for government that Sir Keir set out in opposition in February 2023 which then formed the backbone of his manifesto.

In a nutshell, these five missions (a sixth, to tackle small boats was introduced in May 2024) were to turn the UK into the fastest growing economy in the G7, improve the NHS and cut NHS waiting lists, launch a new border security command to drive down small boat crossings, make Britain a clean energy power, safer streets and improve opportunities for all through improvements in childcare, schools and further education.

Turning missions into milestones

On Thursday, those missions will be turned into a set of milestones for this parliament.

The PM hopes it will help voters better understand what he wants to achieve to improve their lives, while giving us all a checklist to hold the government to account.

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Number 10 also wants these “measurable milestones” to galvanise delivery in Whitehall and force reform, be it through the use of artificial intelligence and tech, re-organisation, and efficiency savings.

I’m told there will be two elements to this.

The first part of what the PM will outline is about fixing the foundations – economic stability, secure borders and national security. Within that, the prime minister will make a clear commitment to reduce net migration and reduce small boat crossings.

The second part will be the mission milestones: For the NHS, there will be a pledge to carry out 92% of routine operations and appointments within 18 weeks by March 2029, a target that has not been hit for almost and decade and will require the current 6.7 million waiting list to be halved in the next five years.

Pledge for thousands more police officers

There will be a new promise for 13,000 police officers on the streets with every neighbourhood having a named, contactable police officer in their community, dealing with local issues.

There will be pledges too on early years education and recommitment that all electricity will come from renewables and nuclear by 2030.

On the economy, the prime minister will pledge to improve living standards, as the more abstract mission to have the fastest growing economy in the G7 is made, to quote one government figure, “real for people around the kitchen table”.

Labour know all too well what happened to their US sister party the Democrats when they talked in broad terms about growth rather than telling voters what it really meant for their pocket, so you can expect the ‘growth commitment’ to be turned into some sort of disposable income target.

No migration mission milestone

As I understand it, there will not be a “mission milestone” on migration, which could well raise eyebrows on Thursday given that the prime minister explicitly added tackling small boats to his missions in the run-up to the election.

Five missions became six first steps in the general election campaign as Labour put tackling small boats on the same footing as the other long-term mission with a pledge to set up a new border command to drive down illegal crossings.

At the time, it was seen as an admission from the Labour opposition that they needed to give voters an offer on small boats and illegal migration. To not include it in the “milestones” on which Starmer is prepared to be measured by the public may well raise questions.

For its part, the prime minister’s team has been at pains to stress these new milestones are not an attempt at a reset, but rather a continuation of the mission-led government Sir Keir has been talking about for over 18 months, from opposition into power.

PM unbothered by critics

Insiders say the milestones are the “obvious next step” which Sir Keir and his team were always going to take and follow the processes that have characterised his ascent to the leadership and style of opposition: logical, methodical follow through of ideas he’s been working on.

Those who work with Sir Keir say he tends to be unbothered by the criticism and views it as the rough and tumble of getting on with it as he ploughs ahead with this plan.

But there is an acknowledgement in all of this that to have any hope of holding his fragile and shallow coalition of support together, then Starmer needs to take on, as one government figure put it, “the tsunami of cynicism”.

This cynicism has imbibed our politics in recent years on the back of broken promises around migration, NHS waiting lists, compounded by partygate and the Truss mini-budget that did for the Tories and for any residual trust in politics too, they said.

Tackling Farage and Reform

Sir Keir’s election strategists Pat McFadden, who now runs the cabinet office at the heart of government, and Morgan McSweeney, who now runs Downing Street as the PM’s chief of staff, know that deliverables are their route to being able to answer the populist and insurgency politics driving the rise of Nigel Farage and Reform.

Former cabinet minister Harriet Harman pointed out in our Electoral Dysfunction podcast that if the story of the 2024 election was Reform eating into the Conservative vote, the battle of the next one will also be driven on whether Labour can hold off the party in strongholds such as Wales, Scotland and parts of the Red Wall where Reform came in second in dozens of seats.

If you look at council by-elections since the general election, argues Baroness Harman, Reform have gained 10 points, while Labour have lost 10 points and the Conservative party has stayed put.

Nigel Farage has made no secret of his desire to start taking votes off the new ‘establishment’, the Labour government.

Sir Keir is clearly alive to the threat, as just days after Donald Trump’s victory in the US election the prime minister said the economy and borders were his two top priorities in government.

These are the battlegrounds on which the Tories and Reform will try to fight them, with the former badly damaged on both and the latter now trying to take lumps out of Labour.

Risk in setting milestones

“There’s more at stake than losing the next election,” one senior Labour figure opined to me the other week. “People thinking we cannot fix problems is the real risk for all progressives. If people don’t believe politics can improve things it will only feed more into the politics of division and hate.”

There is also a risk in setting milestones. Too soft and they become meaningless, too ambitious without a concrete plan to deliver them, and you set yourself up to fail. “We have to prioritise and know the route map,’ explained one government figure. “We might not hit it,” they added, acknowledging the jeopardy.

What about Sunak’s targets?

You might remember Rishi Sunak’s five targets – halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut waiting lists and stop the boats.

At the time of the general election campaign, we went through these line-by-line in the Sky News Battle for No 10 leadership interviews, and Mr Sunak had to tell a live audience that on NHS waiting lists, stopping small boats and falling debt, he had failed.

He promised the public “no tricks, no ambiguity” and owned those failures before being given the verdict at the ballot box a few weeks later.

When I asked Sir Keir in Rio at the G7 summit what the essence of his leadership was, he said: “I want working people to be better off. I want people to feel the impact of our policies in their pocket so that they can enjoy life in the way they want to, with themselves and their family.

“The basic security is that working people want a decent wage that provides for them in their family. Education allows their children to go as far as their talent will take them, a health service that’s there when they need it. But in a nutshell, it’s about making working people feel better off, and I am determined that that will remain my focus.”

Thursday’s milestones will be built around that central goal to make people better off, in their pockets, and in their lives – be it better schooling for their kids or better access to the local GP or hospital, or cleaner energy.

Tangible pledges on which the prime minister can be measured. It may not be a reset but, if Number 10 gets it right, it has the potential to be a fresh start for a prime minister who has failed to make his mark with the electorate since he won that election.

UK

Widow has ‘no regrets’ over assisted suicide of husband despite ‘ongoing’ police investigation

Published

7 mins ago

April 17, 2025

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Widow has 'no regrets' over assisted suicide of husband despite 'ongoing' police investigation

A woman who is under police investigation after assisting the suicide of her husband at Dignitas in Switzerland has told Sky News she has no regrets.

Louise Shackleton has spoken publicly for the first time since her husband’s death in December, as parliament prepares to vote again on legislation to introduce assisted dying in England and Wales.

Mrs Shackleton surrendered herself to police after returning from Switzerland having seen her husband Anthony die. He had been suffering with motor neurone disease for six years.

“I have committed a crime, which I have admitted to, of assisting him by simply pushing him on to a plane and being with him, which I don’t regret for one moment. He was my husband and I loved him,” she said.

“We talked at length over two years about this. What he said to me on many occasions is ‘look at my options, look at what my options are. I can either go there and I can die peacefully, with grace, without pain, without suffering or I could be laid in a bed not being able to move, not even being able to look at anything unless you move my head’.

“He didn’t have options. What he wanted was nothing more than a good death.”

The law in the UK prohibits people from assisting in the suicide of others, but prosecutions have been rare.

In a statement, a North Yorkshire Police spokesman told Sky News: “The investigation is ongoing. There is nothing further to add at this stage.”

The next vote on the assisted dying bill for England and Wales has been delayed by three weeks to give MPs time to consider amendments.

The legislation would permit a person who is terminally ill with less than six months to live to legally end their life after approval by two doctors and an expert panel.

‘He was at total peace with his decision’

Mrs Shackleton says she saw her husband “physically and mentally” relax once on the flight to Switzerland.

She said: “We had the most wonderful four days.

“He was laughing. He was at total peace with his decision.

“It was in those four days that I realised that he wanted the peaceful death more than he wanted to suffer and stay with me, which was hard, but that’s how resolute he was in having this peace.

“I was his wife, we’d been together 25 years, we’d known each other since we were 18. I couldn’t do anything else but help him.”

‘We need to safeguard people’

She said the hardest part of the journey came after her husband’s death.

“There was this panic and this fear that I was leaving him,” she said. “That was a horrific experience.

“If the law had changed in this country, I would have been with family, family would have been with us, family would’ve been with him. But as it was, that couldn’t happen.”

Opponents to the assisted dying bill have raised concerns about the safety of vulnerable people and the risk of coercion and a change in attitudes toward the elderly, seriously ill and disabled.

They say improvements to palliative care should be a priority.

“I think that we need to safeguard people,” said Mrs Shackleton. “I think that sometimes we need to suffer other people’s choices, and when I mean suffer I mean we have to acknowledge that whilst we’re not comfortable with those, that we need to respect other people, other people wishes.”

Anthony, who died aged 59, was a furniture restorer who had earned worldwide recognition for making rocking horses.

“I think the measure of the man is that nobody has ever said a bad word about him in the whole of his life because he was just so caring and giving,” his widow said.

‘This is about a dying person’s choice’

She said she had chosen to speak publicly because of a promise she had made him.

“I felt that my husband’s journey shouldn’t be in vain. We discussed this on our last day and my husband made me promise to tell his story.

“He told me to fight and the simple thing that I’m fighting for is people to have the choice.

“This is about a dying person’s choice to either follow their journey through with disease or to die peacefully when they want to, on their terms, and have a good death. It’s that simple.”

UK

Feminists ‘feel braver about speaking out’ after gender ruling – but critics say it ‘stokes culture war’

Published

3 hours ago

April 17, 2025

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Feminists 'feel braver about speaking out' after gender ruling - but critics say it 'stokes culture war'

A former Labour MP who quit the party over Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership has welcomed the landmark Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman as a “victory for feminists”.

Rosie Duffield, now the independent MP for Canterbury, said the judgment helped resolve the “lack of clarity” that has existed in the politics around the issue “for years”.

She was speaking to Ali Fortescue on the Politics Hub on the same day the UK’s highest court delivered its verdict on one of the most contentious debates in politics.

Politics latest: MPs respond to Supreme Court ruling on gender

The judges were asked to rule on how “sex” is defined in the 2010 Equality Act – whether that means biological sex or “certificated” sex, as legally defined by the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.

Their unanimous decision was that the definition of a “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refers to “a biological woman and biological sex”.

Asked what she made about comments by fellow independent MP John McDonnell – who said the court “failed to hear the voice of a single trans person” and that the decision “lacked humanity and fairness” as a result, she said: “This ruling doesn’t affect trans people in the slightest.

“It’s about women’s rights – women’s rights to single sex spaces, women’s rights, not to be discriminated against.

“It literally doesn’t change a single thing for trans rights and that lack of understanding from a senior politician about the law is a bit worrying, actually.”

However, Maggie Chapman, a Scottish Green MSP, disagreed with Ms Duffield and said she was “concerned” about the impact the ruling would have on trans people “and for the services and facilities they have been using and have had access to for decades now”.

“One of the grave concerns that we have with this ruling is that it will embolden people to challenge trans people who have every right to access services,” she said.

“We know that over the last few years… their [trans people’s] lives have become increasingly difficult, they have been blocked from accessing services they need.”

Delivering the ruling at the London court on Wednesday, Lord Hodge said: “But we counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another. It is not.

“The Equality Act 2010 gives transgender people protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender.

“This is the application of the principle of discrimination by association. Those statutory protections are available to transgender people, whether or not they possess a gender recognition certificate.”

Asked whether she believed the judgment could “draw a line” under the culture war, Ms Chapman told Fortescue: “Today’s judgment only stokes that culture war further.”

And she said that while Lord Hodge was correct to say there were protections in law for trans people in the 2020 Equality Act, the judgment “doesn’t prevent things happening”.

“It may offer protections once bad things have happened, once harassment, once discrimination, once bigotry, once assaults have happened,” she said.

She also warned some groups “aren’t going to be satisfied with today’s ruling”.

“We know that there are individuals and there are groups who actually want to roll back even further – they want to get rid of the Gender Recognition Act from 2004,” she said.

“I think today’s ruling just emboldens those views.”

UK

Arsenal reach Champions League semi-final with dramatic win over Real Madrid

Published

3 hours ago

April 17, 2025

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Arsenal reach Champions League semi-final with dramatic win over Real Madrid

Arsenal have reached the semi-finals of the Champions League after a dramatic victory over holders Real Madrid in Spain.

The north London side, who became the first English team to win twice at the Bernabeu following their triumph there 19 years ago, will face Paris Saint-Germain in the last four after the French side beat Aston Villa on Tuesday.

It is the third time the Gunners have made it through to the semis of the top club football tournament in Europe, and the first since 2009.

Arsenal went into the second leg of their quarter-final clash on Wednesday with a 3-0 lead.

Backed by a raucous home crowd, Madrid tried to get off to a strong start and Kylian Mbappe scored after two minutes. However, the goal was disallowed for a clear offside.

Arsenal had the chance to go ahead in the 13th minute but winger Bukayo Saka missed a penalty.

The Spanish hosts were awarded a penalty of their own about 10 minutes later when Mbappe stumbled under pressure from Declan Rice in the box – but the decision was overturned by VAR.

Saka atoned for his tepid penalty as he chipped the ball past Madrid’s keeper Thibaut Courtois when put through on goal by auxiliary striker Mikel Merino in the 65th minute.

But Arsenal were pegged back just two minutes later as Vinicius Junior caught William Saliba dawdling on the ball and fired Real Madrid level.

Arsenal’s resolute defending kept the home side at bay until Gabriel Martinelli made a late break through the home side’s defence to put his side 2-1 ahead three minutes into injury time, as the Gunners made it 5-1 on aggregate.

‘We knew we were going to win’, says Rice

Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice has insisted his team are intent on winning the Champions League after their victory in Madrid.

Speaking to TNT Sport, Rice, who was named player of the match, said: “It’s such a special night, a historic one for the club. We have the objective of playing the best and winning the competition.

“We had so much belief and confidence from that first leg and came here to win the game. We knew we were going to suffer but we knew we were going to win. We had it in our minds, then we did it [in] real life. What a night.

“I knew when I signed, this club was on an upward trajectory. It’s been tough in the Premier League but in this competition we’ve done amazingly well.

“It’s PSG next, who are an amazing team.”

‘We have to be very proud of ourselves’, says Arteta

Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta told TNT Sport: “One of the best nights in my football career.

“We played against a team with the biggest history.

“To be able to win the tie in the manner we have done, I think we have to be very proud of ourselves.”

He added: “The history we have in this competition is so short. The third time in our history of what we have just done and we have to build on that. All this experience is going to help us, for sure.”

Real Madrid were seeking their third Champions League title in four seasons.

Mbappe twisted ankle

Their forward Mbappe twisted his right ankle during the game and was jeered by part of the crowd when his substitution was announced after a lacklustre performance.

The French star, who is still looking for his first Champions League title, was replaced by Brahim Diaz in the 75th minute following his injury. He was able to walk off the pitch by himself, but was limping slightly.

The other semi-final will be between Barcelona and Inter Milan.

The first legs are set to be played on 29 and 30 April, with the second legs on 6 and 7 May.

The final will be on 31 May.