Politics is full of paradoxical moments, and thus it was for Keir Starmer that his speech explaining the urgency of helping young people express themselves was interrupted by two notably eloquent examples, who proceeded to accuse him of a U-turn on green policies. As the duo stepped forward from the young and telegenic lineup placed behind the Labour leader at MidKent College in Gillingham, unfurling a banner, you could almost hear the exasperated sighs of frustration from Starmer’s aides. But while the Green New Deal Rising mini protest will inevitably occupy some immediate headlines, there is likely to be satisfaction around Starmer as his team comes to the end of a tricky period in trying to explain what he and Labour stand for. Thursday’s speech set out the fifth and last of Starmer’s self-stated “missions”, this one based around barriers to opportunity: an arena taking in everything from a revised school curriculum – including a pledge to prioritise “oracy” and self-confidence in pupils – to better early years provision and more housing. Some Starmer sceptics, including among his own MPs, have complained that the missions, otherwise covering economic growth, crime, the NHS and clean energy, are on the flabby side, lacking the necessary policy details.
The Labour leader and his team insist the specifics can come closer to an election, especially so given the imperative of costing any actual pledges, and the need to evaluate a fast-moving economic situation beforehand. This is an inherent tension that points to a wider near-contradiction in Starmer’s strategy: he is promising radical policies, but carried out in a sensible way. When quizzed about why tackling poverty merited only a passing mention in the five missions, Starmer insisted a government led by him would be “laser-focused” on the issue. But when asked about specifics, including what some Labour MPs see as the very basics such as the end of the punitive two-child benefit limit, he again refused to be drawn. This to and fro can mask ideas within the missions that are, on occasions, genuinely novel and relatively radical, particularly in the context of the last 13 years of Conservative rule. In his speech on Thursday, Starmer called time on years of education ministers talking about coding and IT skills, arguing instead that the AI era would incentivise creativity and the other attributes “that make us human”. Similarly, while Green New Deal Rising was protesting at the change to Labour’s former flagship policy to spend £28bn a year on green initiatives, even in its watered-down form it goes well beyond anything proposed by the Conservative government. During a post-speech Q&A, Starmer did a decent job of explaining the importance of the missions, describing them as a framework for government – something the Labour leader contrasted with what he termed the utter chaos and lack of focus under Rishi Sunak. But amid all this was also a caveat: any Labour government would be necessarily “constrained” by an economic outlook much more gloomy than that inherited by Tony Blair in 1997. Some within Labour will argue that excess caution risks keeping the UK trapped in the economic quagmire, and that rules for investment can be different from those for everyday spending. Those around Starmer, in response, will point back to last autumn’s Liz Truss debacle for an instant pointer about the risks of fiscal abandon. Repeatedly in his speech, Starmer stressed the need for rapid, transformative policies to equip the UK and its young people for the emerging, AI-led economy. In this, and several other ways, he has laid down an expectation of boldness, of ambition. With the five pledges made, voters will be looking to what comes next.