Keir Starmer diluted one of his green targets and redefined his economic growth goals on Thursday as the UK prime minister attempted to reset his government after five difficult months in office.
Mr Starmer said the UK would aim for at least 95 per cent clean power by 2030, backtracking on a pre-election pledge that the UK would “run on 100 per cent clean and cheap power” by that year.
The Labour leader insisted, as he set out new policy “milestones”, that his party’s green mission “hasn’t changed since the day we launched it two years ago”.
Mr Starmer said his government would “deliver the highest sustained growth in the G7″ but he did not set a time frame. Previously, he vowed to hit the fastest growth in the G7 “over consecutive years by the end of the parliament”.
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His new economic milestone also targets higher real disposable income per person and gross domestic product per capita by the end of the parliament, which can run until 2029.
Mr Starmer’s team insisted his speech at Pinewood film studios near London was not a “relaunch” but an attempt to set out clearly his top priorities.
The new targets – ranging from policing to hospital operations – are partly an attempt to focus Whitehall on delivering Mr Starmer’s five missions: economic growth, clean energy, improving the NHS, safer streets and raising education standards.
Mr Starmer, whose poll ratings have slumped since Labour’s landslide victory in the July 4th general election, said his Plan for Change document would land on the desk of civil servants “with the heavy thud of a gauntlet being thrown down”.
He said he wanted to deploy the “full power of government” to deliver his objectives, but added: “That’s precisely what’s broken.” Mr Starmer wants to modernise Whitehall, including increasing the use of artificial intelligence.
The prime minister has been criticised for a carousel of initiatives. On top of the five missions and his new milestones, in May he also set out six “first steps”, which included a measure to tackle irregular migration.
“Hard-working Brits are going out grafting every day but are getting short shrift from a politics that should serve them,” Mr Starmer said.
The prime minister’s team fears that some of his original policy missions – notably the promise to make Britain the fastest-growing G7 economy by the end of Labour’s first term – were hard for voters to grasp.
The new economic “milestone” talks of “raising living standards in every part of the UK, so working people have more money in their pocket”.
Other milestones involve building 1.5 million homes in England and fast-tracking at least 150 major economic infrastructure projects, a target Mr Starmer said would be vital to securing higher growth.
On the National Health Service, 92 per cent of patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks for elective treatment.
Mr Starmer also pledged to put 13,000 new police officers, special constables or support officers on the street and ensure that 75 per cent of five year olds in England were “ready to learn when they start school”.
The prime minister insisted that the new wording on green electricity did not represent any change in Labour’s pre-election pledge to achieve “zero-carbon electricity by 2030″.
Labour insisted the expert definition of “clean power” meant more than 95 per cent. The party in its manifesto also said it would “maintain a strategic reserve of gas power stations to guarantee security of supply”.
The previous Conservative government, which Labour has argued was not ambitious enough on the green transition, had a 95 per cent clean power target.
Claire Coutinho, Tory shadow energy secretary, said: “They’ve watered down their plans because they know they come with a monumental price tag.”
Chris Stark, who Labour appointed head of the “UK’s mission for clean power” at the department for energy security and Net Zero, insisted there had been no change in policy.
“The manifesto said that clean power would include a strategic reserve of gas. We commissioned [National Energy System Operator] advice – it confirmed that ‘clean power’ means at least 95 per cent,” he said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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