Towards the end of last year, the Government launched their self-acclaimed ‘Plan for Change’. Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed tens of journalists in front of polished marketing and unveiled a series of milestones for the public to hold him against. The 6 milestones covered targets for increasing living standards, building homes, tackling NHS waiting lists, police numbers, the educational attainment of 5-year-olds and clean energy. The rationale behind the Plan for Change is clear: Starmer and his Government need to prove they can deliver. 

As noted in our previous post: the 2024 election saw the lowest turnout of all voting-age adults (52%) since universal suffrage in 1928 with Labour only achieving 33.7%, only 1.7 points higher than in 2019 when the party suffered one of its worst election defeats in almost a century’. More generally, fewer and fewer people are satisfied with the UK’s current settlement. Before the 2024 election, Ipsos revealed that only 27% of people feel satisfied with how democracy works and only 53% feel they can influence political change through voting.

Therefore, by creating these milestones, the Government has established clear targets for them to be held against. If they succeed in reaching these targets, Starmer may hope to gain the support of the unpersuaded but also turn a corner on reducing wider political apathy in the UK. This focus on ‘deliverism’ has seen many note Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, using a similar governing logic to take on the British National Party in Barking and Dagenham, East London, between 2008 and 2010. McSweeney made the pointof shifting the council’s strategy to defeat the BNP from distributing ‘rebuttal’ leaflets towards ensuring the council delivered for residents through public service reform and a focus on economic growth. Now, McSweeney appears to be applying the same playbook on a national scale.

Reactions from organisations in the UK’s policy ecosystem have been fairly supportive. The Institute for Government posited the Plan for Change as an ‘opportunity’ to align Government efforts around ‘clearly defined priorities’, praising the use of targets for increasing accountability and diagnosing performance issues. Meanwhile, the Institute for Public Policy Research commended the Plan for Change for reflecting the priorities of voters, particularly the focus on living standards and public services. However, the IPPR noted that the Plan for Change must be a starting point rather than the destination. 

This raises a fundamental question: even if the Government meets its self-imposed targets, will this strategy of deliverism persuade?

Are targets the correct approach?

Let’s go back to the foundational level: the latter half of the first section presupposed that targets and deliverism are a logical step to increase accountability and trust. However, it’s not all that clear that targets might be a useful metric for all sectors of policy. Drawing from philosopher Michael Sandel’s critique of market principles in public goods, we might question whether targets are the best way to manage such goods.

Specifically, the Government’s Plan for Change placed a target of ensuring that 92 per cent of NHS patients in England wait no more than 18 weeks for non-urgent hospital treatment. There was also a target of ensuring that 75% of five-year-olds reach a ‘good level of development’ in the ‘early years foundation stage assessment’. These goals are intuitive but creating targets to reach them, may not be the best approach. In particular, such a focus on deliverism may mean that we interpret health and education policy purely through the lens of these targets – as if to suggest that these public goods are best governed by market principles such as competition and efficiency. Importantly, governing public goods through these targets undermines the intrinsic value of health or education as it reduces them to commodities and tick boxes to hit.

Therefore, it may become logical to undermine other parts of public services to meet these targets – a point that has been made by officials at NHS England in response to the Plan for Change. The same logic could apply for the allocation of funding in the Department for Education – might this mean that early years are granted more attention ahead of the pressing workforce challenges in schools and further education? Significantly, if we do not view these as public goods, this undermines the sense that all citizens are owed access to these essential public goods, beyond just as a means to meet the Government’s self-imposed targets.

Marking their own homework

Even if we accept the Government’s use of targets, another issue is the formulation of these targets. While these targets flow relatively logically as a means to deliver Labour’s wider 5 missions for Government, their 6 steps for change, and their manifesto, the rationale behind prioritising these specific targets over equally pressing issues is ambiguous.

It at least appears unclear why these 6 very specific targets have been prioritised over other equalling pressing issues in each sector. For instance, is this to suggest that cutting NHS waiting lists is more important than fixing adult social care or that ensuring that children reach a good level of development at 5 is more pressing than the crisis in higher education funding. There is no justification for the lexical priority of each issue beyond what we can read between the lines: Starmer’s disapproval ratings are low, his majority is hollow and he needs to be seen to be delivering.

However, without linking these targets to the UK’s deeper structural challenges and the long-term needs of the public, the Government risks coming across as if they are marking their own homework. This brings unwelcome parallels between Starmer and Rishi Sunak’s formulation of his ‘five key priorities’ in January 2023. Notably the the small boats crisis formed a key constituent of this – a choice widely interpreted as pandering to his backbenchers rather than addressing broader systemic issues.

Such a top-down formulation on deliverism, may only breed ‘quick fixes’ that avoid addressing more structural challenges – such as those in adult social care provision. Even where these targets are ambitious—like reducing NHS waiting times—their lack of transparency and citizen engagement undermines their credibility. A more radical proposal would be to democratically decide on legal targets for significant policy issues through direct referenda or a citizens’ assembly. We suggested this in our prior blog on short-termism in UK politics. This might ensure targets are more transparent, inclusive, and better aligned with the public’s long-term needs.

Where is the philosophy?

Finally, the Government’s Plan for Change has fallen foul of a recurring problem for Starmer’s Government: the lack of a clear philosophical grounding. This is not a new issue. In a June 2023 interview with Timemagazine Starmer’s explication of Starmerism focused on the importance of fixing issues, whether this be the economy or crime. Therefore, the connection between Starmerism and deliverism is self-apparent.

This focus is evident across Starmer’s discourse. His keynote address to the 2024 Labour Party Conference omitted any direct reference to contained no mention of ‘equality’, ‘freedom’, ‘social justice’, ‘egalitarianism’, ‘progressivism’, ‘social democracy’ or ‘socialism’. By the point of contrast, ‘£22bn’ was mentioned once and ‘black hole’ was mentioned four times in the very same speech – speaking to the almost comedic regularity at which the Government reminded the public of their fiscal and economic inheritance. Finally, Starmer’s speech on the Plan for Change, his foreword in the document and the very document itself also omitted the aforementioned principles. 

Moreover, Starmer has failed to link key policy shifts with philosophical principles – this is evident in the decision to expand the Agricultural Property Relief. The Government situated this decision as a means to tackle their fiscal inheritance despite the limited money it would raise. They failed to link this to solidarity as a means to redistribute the playing field and to prevent free riding. Although the Government were forthright in their use of ‘working people’ in their argument and this could be interpreted as redistributive – this was not connected to a philosophical argument for such redistribution.

Importantly then, perhaps the Plan for Change represented an important juncture for the Government to diversify their pitch to the electorate beyond just that they will ‘fix’ issues. Instead, the Plan for Change simply reasserts the Government’s focus on deliverism. Therefore, the issue is not the absence of philosophy as the Government has quite clearly established deliverism as its governing philosophy. Rather, the issue is the philosophy itself. If the Government’s first 7 months are anything to go by – according to YouGov, Starmer’s net favourability has fallen to its lowest ever level at -41% – then it might need to diversify its pitch to the electorate.

Purely focusing on ‘delivering’ and kicking the Conservatives has left the Government wanting. Therefore, as the Government enters 2025, it would be wrong to downplay the importance of oracy, persuasion and philosophising in its strategy. Specifically, by unequivocally identifying its policies and itself with the intuitive principles of egalitarianism, mutual respect and social justice, voters may begin to identify with the Government’s agenda.