The stock takes put pressure on departments to get their ducks in a row, said people with knowledge of them, and give Cabinet ministers face-time with Starmer to press their most urgent requests — including getting No. 10 to lean on other departments. “The prime minister wants” are still among the most powerful words in Whitehall.
There is continuity, too. Supporters of the PM point out that the missions themselves still stand, two and a half years after Starmer unveiled them. The Cabinet ministers leading them have all remained in their jobs. Starmer’s “Plan for Change” — which attached “milestones” to the missions — is mentioned constantly in government press releases (under orders from No. 10), and the missions govern the structure of the “grid,” the weekly news planner circulated to senior communications officials.
While roles as “business champions” for loyal, fresh-faced Labour backbenchers to sell the message were quietly scrapped in July, similar “mission champions” still exist. There are regional champions, as well as mission-specific ones — Rosie Wrighting on health, Dan Tomlinson on growth, Tom Hayes on net zero, and Sarah Smith on opportunity. Fellow new MP Linsey Farnsworth was the champion for tackling crime, but her role ended in the summer after she spoke out against planned welfare cuts and she has not yet been replaced, said one person with knowledge of the move.
Some other Labour MPs, though, have long complained that Starmer’s overlapping missions, milestones and steps blur the message they are meant to send to the public. Events and crises can knock these long-term goals off course, too. A second former government official said: “They’ve been talking about nothing but small boats all summer.”
It takes time
These struggles should surprise no one, according to Michelle Clement, a lecturer at King’s College London who wrote “The Art of Delivery,” a study of Blair’s first delivery unit.
“We’re in the equivalent of 1998,” she told POLITICO. Blair, frustrated by the pace of change on key domestic priorities, only set up his unit in 2001. Whitehall is still getting over life under five Conservative PMs in 14 years. “All of the change and churn that we saw in recent years of prime ministers does have an impact on the capacity of the state,” she added.