Keir Starmer has used a speech to set out his vision for how Labour would seek to rebuild the UK after the coronavirus crisis, giving a handful of specific policy ideas and several more general approaches. Here are the main points. British recovery bond An official savings scheme intended to harvest the additional savings accumulated by some households during lockdown, so they can be used for post-Covid spending on infrastructure and jobs. There has been much recent commentary on how governments can best unleash what is estimated to be well over £125bn in spending suppressed amid the coronavirus pandemic. Others have come up with similar ideas. Last year the centrist New Policy Institute thinktank proposed a “coronavirus bond”, while this week Tory MPs based in the north of England suggested a savings scheme targeting their region for investment. Start-up loans for businesses This is another familiar idea, not least as it would be based on the existing Start Up Loans Company, a government-backed scheme that provides investment for new businesses. But Labour argues that so far it is both too unambitious – providing fewer than 9,500 loans per year since it started in 2012 – and biased towards London and south-east England. Starmer’s plan would pledge to fund 100,000 businesses over five years, and spread the regional basis of the investment, with Labour pointing to figures showing almost a quarter of all money so far has gone to London. Partnership with business If there was a standout line in the speech, it was perhaps less about new policies than Starmer’s argument that Labour had a tendency to see business as “something just to be tolerated or taxed”, a not-very-coded repudiation of what some voters saw as the attitude under Jeremy Corbyn. Working with businesses, Starmer said, was “pivotal to my leadership”, dismissing what he called a false choice between a vigorous economy and improved equality. But he also stressed that businesses would be expected to be central to both helping equality outcomes, and tackling the climate emergency. Tackling deep-rooted inequalities
Aside from Harold Wilson, whose “moral crusade” Starmer borrowed, the only individual referenced in the speech was Prof Michael Marmot, the epidemiologist and chronicler of the hugely varying life chances faced by people in the UK. Last year, a 10-year update of Marmot’s pioneering study into national inequalities found that a decade of austerity had seen life expectancy stalled for the first time in more than 100 years, and even reverse for the most deprived women. The Covid pandemic, Starmer argued, had “got into the cracks and crevices of our society and forced them open with tragic consequences”, worsening such inequalities. While politicians invariably point to tackling such issues as a key focus, Starmer made this central to his speech, and clearly views it as a dividing line with the Conservatives, for all Boris Johnson’s talk of “levelling up”. Public services – but also financial responsibility There were a series of familiar policy commitments based on spending and public services, including to maintain the £20-a-week uplift in universal credit introduced with Covid; money to local authorities to limit council taxes rises; ending the public sector pay freeze; and measures to help business, such as extended business rate and VAT relief, and a longer Covid furlough scheme for employees. But here, too, was a pledge aimed clearly at voters who felt Labour had appeared too profligate at the 2019 election. “Under my leadership Labour’s priority will always be financial responsibility,” Starmer said. “I know the value of people’s hard-earned money – I take that incredibly seriously.”