When Sir Keir Starmer landed in Hull on Thursday as the latest prime minister proposing to reshape the state, he wanted to show he meant it, announcing he was abolishing the world’s largest quango – NHS England (and with it 9,000 jobs).
Significant, decisive and designed to make the point – the prime minister grabbed attention for the argument that he wanted to make around tackling an “ever-expanding” state that was, in his words, “weaker” than it has ever been, and failing to serve the public properly.
This is his diagnosis and his remedy, reform: dispensing of regulators, cutting red tape, injecting artificial intelligence in the backbone of the state to improve efficiency and cut costs (and jobs).
Politics latest: Thousands to lose jobs as PM abolishes NHS England
On most of this he was vague – heavy on rhetoric but light on detail, but the symbolism of abolishing NHS England was clear for all to see: this prime minister is borrowing from a Conservative playbook in an effort to improve services through deregulation, public service cuts and a bonfire of red tape.
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Sir James Bethell, a Conservative peer and former health minister, retweeted the prime minister’s announcement on scrapping NHS England with the words: “I wish we’d had the guts to do this.”
Sir Keir is also signalling he’s prepared to have a fight – not just with the “blockers” or the “NIMBYs”, but with his own party, public sector workers and the unions as he takes a scalpel to the state.
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Reforms are ultimately about winning a second term
The prime minister said every arm’s-length governmental body was up for review – and also, in a couple of weeks, he will take aim at the burgeoning welfare budget in an effort to find billions in savings as he looks to deal with the squeeze on the public finances through spending cuts rather than tax rises or loosening his chancellor’s self-imposed borrowing rules.
Taking on the state in one form or the other is something many a Conservative prime minister, not least Liz Truss, have often talked about, and now Sir Keir is adopting this approach. But for him, the ultimate pragmatist, this is not about ideology but something else – delivery, and ultimately, trying to win a second term.
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This is him explaining his motivations to his cabinet in a letter he sent to all his ministers last month: “Politics is no longer built around a traditional left-right axis. It is instead being reimagined around a disruptor – disrupted axis. If governments are not changing the system in favour of working people, then voters will find someone else who does.
“We need to be disruptors – on behalf of those ordinary, working people who just want more security in their lives and a country that is on its way back up again.
“That means taking on vested interests of all kinds, it means challenging laws that hold Britain back, stripping back regulation that stifles progress, moving power out of Westminster and back to communities across the country. It means standing up for ordinary people who feel shut out and ignored by elites. Whenever we see barriers to renewal, this government will tear them down.”
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At its heart is the admission from the prime minister that if his government doesn’t deliver, the winners will be Reform UK, or even a revived Conservative opposition.
Starmer prepared to fight for his public sector reforms
But as much as he makes this argument, there will be many in his party, in the union movement, and who voted Labour who hear the word austerity when they hear Sir Keir say “reform”.
That’s why I asked him, at the event in Hull, whether this drive was a return to austerity, or, at the very least, will appear that to those on the receiving end of these cuts.
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After all, at the general election manifesto launch, when I asked the prime minister whether there would be a return to austerity under a Labour government, he vowed: “There will not be austerity under a Starmer government.”
On Thursday, he insisted there would be “no return to austerity”.
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“Part of the problem we’ve got with our public services is what was done to them a decade or so ago. So we’re not going down that route, and none of our plans are going down that route,” he said.
But when those welfare cuts are announced later this month, Sir Keir’s “reforms” might look rather different, as might his plans for public sector reform if thousands of workers lose their jobs.
What was clear as he made his argument on Thursday is that it’s a fight he’s prepared to have.
