Downing Street is scrambling for new ideas amid a shake-up of the No 10 Policy Unit, which began this week with another wave of departures.
Two advisers, on social policy and energy, handed in their resignations. Some ensuing promotion and recruitment is underway. It’s the second or possibly third time this has happened so far this year. In April the health and infrastructure advisers left suddenly in the same week. And then amid the September reshuffle the director of the policy unit, Stuart Ingham, was given a broader No 10 role, while the director of policy delivery, Liz Lloyd, was sent to the House of Lords.
There has been some briefing that this restructure is another result of “hippy-punching” – progressives being made to feel unwelcome in the government. But it’s more an indication that the government is at a loose end and searching for a policy direction. (It comes just weeks after a hasty ID card announcement which is thought to have been poorly handled.)
The most successful prime ministers since – Thatcher and Blair – both placed trusted boffins in the Policy Unit, which played an important role in their success. Thatcher had Ferdinand Mount and John Redwood, Blair had David Miliband and Andrew Adonis. Harold Wilson set the whole thing up in the Seventies to fill what he thought was a “hole at the centre”: the prime minister didn’t have a large brain trust of advisers, unlike his secretaries of state.
But despite the undoubted wealth of talent within it, Keir Starmer’s ever-changing Policy Unit isn’t working like it did for those predecessors. Now the halting start of the first 15 months has given rise to a slightly fumbling, if politically exciting, search for policy proposals.
There’s a growing coalition of people from government, think tanks and various internal Labour parliamentary caucuses who, one source told the New Statesman, “don’t necessarily share a politics but do share a view that things are going badly wrong, not just with this government but with the way government works full stop.”
Likewise there is an increasing willingness to listen to outside ideas from No 10. In September some of these figures were invited to a private meeting in which there was a no-limits discussion ranging from the role of the judiciary and quangos in constraining government action to possible ways out of the fiscal straitjacket.
There is now talk about what a Labour version of Thatcher’s seminal “Stepping Stones” plan for reform, drafted by John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss, would look like. Critics might point out that this influential plan was written 18 months before Thatcher entered No 10. And there is also some serious talk of setting up a coordinating group between wonk outsiders and No 10 to work through the current malaise.
The New Statesman has seen one particularly interesting note that’s been circulating among some of the Policy Unit and other No 10 advisers called “Project Home Turf”. Drafted by an external wonk aligned with Labour, it argues that on most major interventions since the election the government has been vainly fighting on “away” ground – borders, crime and economy – while missing opportunities to play at “home” – health, education and housing.
It asks why, for example, last year’s budget was presented as a “Budget for Growth” when it could just have easily been “for the NHS”, with the £29bn bung given to Health Secretary Wes Streeting, paid for by the stinging tax rises. It also recommends this next, painful budget should be branded as such.
When “away” issues must be fought, it argues, the best strategy is to neutralise and move on. The only successfully neutralised “away” issue since the election, it argues, has been defence, thanks to John Healey’s increased spending pledge. Meanwhile the government quickly ceded a lead on managing the economy back to the Conservatives and experienced rapidly falling credibility on immigration.
Publicly available polling on Labour’s strengths suggests this isn’t all wrong-headed (and the note does argue that while small boat crossings will need to be tackled, the PLP will find that easier to swallower if the government is talking left the rest of the time).
Such thinking has been triggered by wider reassessment of New Labour’s triple-election winning time in government. It is often forgotten that Alastair Campbell spent much of his time at No 10 trying to move the argument onto hospitals and schools while taking the sting out of Tory attacks about migration, crime and defence.
Likewise, the government-adjacent Blue Labour group is keen to fill what it sees as a vacuum of ideas at the top. While it publicly released an updated statement of principles during conference last week, I understand that behind the scenes the group is developing policy proposals in three areas: expanding public ownership, for example over water companies, improving conditions in care work and controlling immigration.
Meanwhile the Future of the Left group, which is somewhat Blue Labour aligned but attached to the Policy Exchange think tank, has commissioned policy papers on Britain’s fiscal framework – which will be critical of the OBR – and on energy security, recommending a national energy strategy. These will be circulated soon.
Sadly, external contributors to the debate inside No 10 have been advised to keep their contributions brief, a plugged-in source told the New Statesman, “because No 10’s attention span is nil”. But with yet another shake-up, that just might change.
[Further reading: The folly of Matthew Syed]
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