Comment: Keir Starmer needs to answer these pressing questions about how he will govern

Keir Starmer’s government has hit the ground running. But over the next few weeks and months, some serious choices will have to be made about exactly how to govern. These are 13 pressing questions that will demand answers soon, partly drawing from my experience working in city government, several national governments (including the UK, where I ran the strategy unit and was head of policy in No.10 under Tony Blair) and the European Commission. 

1. How can Whitehall perform more effectively? 

The new prime minister and cabinet secretary will need to drive up performance in Whitehall departments. That might require reviving capability reviews and importing the role of public service commissioners from Australia to keep the civil service on its toes. 

There’ll also be a need to rebuild the training system which has largely collapsed, perhaps with a new college of government, not just for officials but also for ministers. 

2. Who will be the fixers? 

Tony Blair built up a strong No 10 and Cabinet Office, with strategy and delivery units and more (I ran the performance and innovation unit before the strategy unit). Starmer now has huge power and patronage but needs vehicles to project that power. He will need central teams able to anticipate and fix problems, to drive strategy and handle difficult events. His predecessors lacked these capacities, and it showed. 

3. Do ministries need reorganising? 

Next, Starmer has to decide on reshaping ministries. Whitehall usually exaggerates how much this kind of structural change achieves and, for now, Starmer has decided to leave the departments intact. But in time he will need to fit the forms to the functions. 

That said, the one restructuring which many policy experts advocate – separating the Treasury’s public spending and economic policy roles (as almost every other country does) – isn’t going to happen anytime soon. 

4. What’s the strategy for talent? 

The government will need a strategy for talent. It’s already brought in talented outsiders as ministers and will need to bring in many more to refresh Whitehall. Getting the right people into the right jobs is key to achieving results – and not running out of steam. 

5. How do you turn missions into action? 

Starmer spoke a lot about “missions” during his election campaign and we can expect an aerosol of “mission” titles in boards and committees. But some subtlety will be needed. Missions in health are very different from ones in economics, crime or the environment. 

A mission delivery unit has been proposed to ensure departments are delivering, but this may also have to be rethought. Combining short-term performance management with long-term strategy in this way tends not to work for long, since they require very different methods and mindsets. 

6. How will Great British Energy actually work? 

Labour has committed to a series of new public institutions (Great British Energy, a national care service, a national wealth fund and Skills England) but has so far offered little detail. 

The national wealth fund has turned out to be little more than a label, but GBE will be set up fast and government will have to decide whether to use any of the methods that have transformed business or the best governments globally over the last decades. The huge impact of data, algorithms and platforms on so much of contemporary life isn’t yet reflected in the plans for new institutions. 

7. What styles of government will be used? 

Will Starmer’s government use the new, often quite draconian, powers governments have taken over the last decade in its operations (such as so-called Henry VIII clauses)? Should there instead be distinctive approaches, for example by cutting the cognitive load for citizens? Much recent policy has done the opposite, with ever more baroque tax and welfare rules, for example. 

8. How can we modernise public finance? 

A critical issue will be to modernise public finance methods – how budgets are set and implemented. The immediate concern will be to keep a grip on the public finances and boost private investment. But in the medium term, the government needs to update Whitehall’s methods, which are out of date and ill-suited to its priorities, whether in relation to longer-term investment in people (investment methods are used for buildings but not for education, health or R&D) or use of data to learn about the impacts spending achieves. 

For a cash-strapped government, creative approaches to efficiency will also be vital. A new “office for value for money” has been promised, but nothing has been said about how it will work. 

9. How do we get local government out of dire straits? 

Stabilising finances for struggling local governments will be a first priority, with fundamental reform long overdue. But better answers will also be needed on how to organise collaboration with local authorities and devolved administrations, getting beyond Whitehall’s various competitive bidding systems which so badly failed on levelling up. 

Periodic meetings of both national and local leaders have been offered in the first few days of the new government. But a shared bureaucracy is also needed. Coordinating efforts at a local level will be vital for many of the government’s priorities, from housing to care.

10. How can digital functions be updated? 

Digital operations matter hugely to modern governments. The GOV.UK site is relatively useable, but the UK has arguably fallen well behind the world’s best. Starmer has decided to concentrate responsibility in one department, but elsewhere central teams have done best, for example in radically simplifying payments, authentication and services. Learning from front runners like Estonia and India would be helpful here. 

Sorting out AI procurement could deliver big gains, but rhetoric is far more visible than results, and there’s a risk of repeating the tech “solutionism” that created past disasters like Horizon. 

11. How can the public sector experiment? 

Top-down policies will only go so far. Just as important will be ideas on how to organise experiments and innovation across the public sector, including mobilising local ingenuity and social entrepreneurs on issues like homelessness and mental health. This continues to be organised in arguably very fragmented, underfunded and ad-hoc ways compared to innovation in fields like pharma. But it could be vital to success in a second term. 

12. How can the government make better use of its own data and evidence? 

Starmer has committed to doing what works. But this will require fresh thinking on how to bring together data, statistics, analysis and evidence in more coherent ways so that government actually knows what is working. Shared intelligence could be a guiding principle for the new government. 

13. How can business and charities be brought in? 

The new government will soon need to work out how to partner with business. Before the election it was all about wooing and reassuring. Promises of sanity and stability are good starting points. But now more structured partnerships are needed, on issues like employee mental health, financial inclusion and decarbonisation. 

There’ll be a parallel need to reframe the government’s compact with civil society, again with a two-way deal, focused on a few priorities such as acute hardship. 

Starmer is right to emphasise that how things are delivered matters as much as what is decided. And he is right to warn against sticking plaster solutions – though some of the most urgent crises such as in Thames Water or local government may demand sticking plasters. 

Before long he will need to start thinking about a more radical agenda for change, ahead of the next election. But for now, the priority is restoring sanity and competence. For that, he needs to recognise that the British state is not a Rolls Royce just waiting for a new driver to steer it in a new direction. Instead, it needs a thorough overhaul, and soon. 

This article originally appeared in The Conversation on 26 July 2024. 

Links

• Original article in The Conversation
• Professor Sir Geoff Mulgan’s academic profile 
• UCL Science, Technology, Engineering & Public Policy 
• UCL Engineering