Labour consider biggest Whitehall shake-up in decades as Keir Starmer strives to deliver key manifesto pledges
Labour is mulling the biggest Whitehall shake-up in decades as Keir Starmer seeks to deliver on his key manifesto commitments.
The move could see the Labour leader heading up new groups designed to cut through civil service silos and delays.
Under the plans Labour could force departments to work together under ‘boards’ designed to pursue its “missions” for government, the Financial Times reports.
These missions include creating economic growth, rebuilding the NHS, investment in green energy and tackling crime.
The boards would make use of private sector expertise, in what could be seen as a controversial move, under plans reportedly being overseen by Sue Gray, the former senior Whitehall official who carried out the Partygate report into Boris Johnson.
Sir Keir has already signalled that his promises to change the country will not happen overnight. The Labour leader has consistently warned that the UK needs a decade of national renewal, as he argued his party would be the best to lead that.
And more than halfway through the campaign, Labour appears on course for a comfortable trek to Downing Street. The party remains more than 20 points ahead of the Tories in many opinion polls, after a disastrous few weeks for Rishi Sunak.
Tom Baldwin, a former Labour communications director and Starmer’s biographer, told the FT he expected a piecemeal approach to any changes, adding: “Keir Starmer and Sue Gray tend to feel their way towards solutions. If one thing doesn’t work, they try something else and become progressively more radical, but always for pragmatic reasons.”
Alex Thomas, programme director at the Institute for Government think-tank, said: “If they went for a full-fat version, which gave missions their own budgets with a named responsible official, that would be radical — the biggest change to how the civil service and government have been organised for several decades.”
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general, has been working for months to test the party’s policies and assess any potential pitfalls.
The Conservatives have vowed to axe 72,000 civil service jobs, but Labour has declined to match this.
Mr Sunak has had a difficult start to the election campaign.
At the weekend he faced claims he had gone into hiding after he was forced to make a grovelling apology for leaving the D-Day commemorations early to take part in a TV interview.
The Tory leader was also ridiculed for claiming his family had had to go without Sky TV when he was a child.
Reform leader Nigel Farage mocked the prime minister after a Tory candidate used pictures of him on her leaflets.
The arch-Brexiteer is plastered across the leaflets of right-wing Conservative Dame Andrea Jenkyns.
Mr Sunak, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen, and there is no reference to the Conservative Party or use of any of its branding.
