What will Labour’s first 100 days look like?

Labour is determined to get the first 100 days right, which is why Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues intend to hit the ground running after the UK election.

Sir Keir Starmer with his wife Victoria Starmer attend a campaign event in London. Picture: Getty Images.

On Wednesday the great and the good of Labour gathered at the Hilton on Park Lane to commemorate the life of Margaret McDonagh, Tony Blair’s general secretary who paved the way for two of the party’s election victories.

Nobody could resist acknowledging they were on the precipice of another. For once, the discipline of the last month dissolved into pre-polling day giddiness.

Speaking at the soiree, Blair said he expected a “great Labour victory”, while Angela Rayner indulged in a rendition of the party’s 1997 anthem: Things Can Only Get Better by D:ream.

The question facing Starmer is whether that is the case – or if, given the state of the economy and public services, things get worse.

That is why Labour is determined to get the first 100 days right, and why Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff and head of elections, believe the party must hit the ground running within days of being elected.

Former Prime Minister, Sir Tony Blair says he expects a “great Labour victory”. Picture: WPA Pool/Getty Images.

Week one

Swearing in

Starmer will head to Buckingham Palace on Friday (Saturday AEST) where King Charles will ask him to form a government. He sat next to the King’s private secretary, Clive Alderton, at a palace banquet last week and has been briefed on the rituals between a prime minister and the monarch.

He will deliver a speech outside No 10 that, according to an insider, will “show that politics can be a force for good rather than the utopian view of progressive liberalism”.

Welcomed on the world stage

On July 9, Starmer will travel to Washington DC for a summit marking the 75th anniversary of NATO with the anticipated foreign secretary David Lammy and defence secretary John Healey. It will be dominated by the Russia-Ukraine war, and Starmer is likely to have a meeting with Ukraine’s President Zelensky before a proposed trip to Kyiv.

A meeting with Joe Biden is yet to be confirmed. A week later Starmer will host a summit of the European Political Community of 47 countries at the birthplace and ancestral home of Winston Churchill, Blenheim Palace. This will offer an “instant” chance to “look prime ministerial” on the world stage.

Back to the green benches

Starmer’s cabinet will be told to get to work immediately, with the King’s Speech due on July 17. MPs will return to the Commons on July 9 and sit until July 31 before breaking until September 2.

Labour’s top team in government will largely mirror its existing shadow cabinet, although sources say Starmer’s aides are looking for bigger jobs for Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general, Ellie Reeves, the deputy national campaign co-ordinator, and Alison McGovern, shadow employment minister. Those in post can expect to hold on to them for five years; one of the big mistakes Blair made, according to allies of Starmer, was too many reshuffles.

The King’s Speech is due on July 17. Picture: Buckingham Palace via Getty Images.

Budget prep

In No 11, Reeves’s team will begin preparations for a budget in mid-September. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is likely to make his first call to the junior doctors’ leaders to begin talks on how to end their pay dispute.

He will also meet the British Dental Association on July 8 to discuss reforming the NHS dentistry contract, which is blamed for a loss of services. Rayner, the new levelling-up secretary, will also make the first steps to turbocharge house building by addressing planning reform and boosting social housing stock.

Surveying the damage

In the first week, Starmer and his top team will finally be able to lift the bonnet and examine the true state of public finances and services. The shadow cabinet has already started working on the “blame game”, preparing announcements that the public purse looks worse than they feared and using every opportunity to point the finger at Liz Truss.

Second Permanent Secretary to the UK Cabinet Office Sue Gray

Aides are working up a narrative that echoes David Cameron and George Osborne’s 2010 claim that the previous Labour government had spent all the money, by framing Starmer’s mission and spending restraint around the idea that the Tories “crashed” the economy.

The civil service and Gray have each drawn up a list of urgent issues in need of attention, known as “black swans”, with one of the most pressing being the overstretched court system and prisons.

Labour intends to hold a sentencing review. The Prison Governors’ Association wants inmates to be released after serving 40 per cent of their sentence. Planning reforms will also speed up the delayed construction of new prisons. But insiders admit “there are no obvious and immediate solutions”.

The Treasury has also been sitting on pay recommendations for millions of public sector workers. The recommendations are understood to far exceed the several billion pounds of funds allocated, putting Labour in an immediate bind.

Busy summer

Build, build, build

In week three Labour will launch its house building program in a King’s Speech focused on “build build build”. By the end of July it will announce a council-led review of green belt land that will be reclassified for development. Local authorities will have to release green belt land if brownfield sites are insufficient.

A recruitment drive for 300 more planning officers, to speed up the rate at which permissions are granted for developments, will also be unveiled. At the end of July, Labour will publish a draft of the national planning policy framework. It will restore top-down targets to ensure councils are meeting housing needs in their areas.

Matt Pennycook, the shadow housing minister, is working with officials to determine if primary legislation is needed to oversee a wave of compulsory purchase orders, allowing privately held land to be released for development. In August, the party will start rolling out “first dibs”, a voluntary housing scheme piloted in London, which gives local people priority for new homes before overseas investors.

Legislative bonanza

The King’s Speech will include a fiscal responsibility bill, putting Reeves’s fiscal rules into law and making it a legal requirement for the Office for Budget Responsibility to provide forecasts to accompany budgets.

There will be two health bills: one will resurrect Sunak’s smoking ban for under-15s, and the second will reform mental health legislation to tackle the growing number of people being sectioned, and to improve care for people with learning disabilities and autism who are often inappropriately detained in hospitals.

The Home Office will deliver a crime and policing bill to crack down on anti-social behaviour and create an offence of criminal exploitation of a child, to tackle county lines drug-dealing. A border security bill will be established to “smash” the small boats gangs. Martyn’s Law, named after the Manchester Arena bombing victim Martyn Hett, will require venues and councils to have training requirements and plans against terror attacks.

A railways bill will allow Labour to take the network back into public ownership when franchises expire. A GB energy bill, establishing a publicly owned clean energy company, has been mooted.

Other legislation will deal with tenancy reform and leasehold, and an elections and democracies bill will introduce automatic voter registration and may include votes for 16-year-olds.

An early test of the mood of Labour MPs will be an amendment to legislation reversing the two-child benefit cap.

Israel-Palestine will be high on the agenda for Lammy. Labour will not immediately recognise a Palestinian state – it hopes to do so later – but Lammy will seek legal advice on whether Israel is in breach of international law.

Handing out jobs

Labour will begin appointing dozens of peers in the House of Lords to reduce the Tory majority. They are likely to include “sparkling” business figures who will hold ministerial office. One likely candidate is Dame Sharon White, who is stepping down as chair of John Lewis.

Inside No 10, Gray will assemble the new Downing Street team. Mission boards will outline Starmer’s top priorities and cabinet members whose departments are leading on delivering them will be allowed four special advisers each. Gray will oversee personnel changes at the top of the civil service. The cabinet secretary, Simon Case, with whom Gray has a complicated relationship, intends to go in January 2025.

Business and pleasure

Starmer will allow himself a family holiday in August. He has told friends that he will attend the Euros final in Berlin if England make it that far. Over the first 100 days, the Ministry of Defence will run a series of “NATO tests” to determine whether the UK is able to fulfil its obligations. A year-long defence review will start to identify shortfalls in the armed forces. For months Labour has been talking to Brussels about a new UK-EU security pact and it could be signed within 100 days.

Finding the money

Difficult choices will have to be made with strained public finances. Departmental budgets will reach a “cliff edge” by December, with the next spending review likely to be delivered by the end of autumn. The challenge will be to avoid the billions of pounds in spending cuts that were baked in by the Tories. “Some would say it’s the worst inheritance we could possibly get,” said a Starmer aide.

The autumn statement will be Reeves’s first big test. Her team has already begun working on it and the expectation is it could come in September or October. It will confirm that VAT on private school fees will be implemented in 2025, in time for the next academic year. She may be forced to raise taxes in other areas. Aligning capital gains rates with income tax seems the most palatable option.

Reeves will also host an international investment summit in London to show that Britain is back open for business under Labour. The program for “growth” and delivering the missions is ready. The big question neither Starmer nor Reeves can answer at this time is what happens if it does not work.

The Sunday Times