Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is lecturer in government studies at the Strand Group, King’s College London, and author of ‘The Art of Delivery’
Almost a year after Labour gained power, Sir Keir Starmer has reflected on a sense of dissatisfaction. “We haven’t always told our story as well as we should,” he said. Yet on entering Downing Street, this prime minister quickly began laying the groundwork for delivering “national renewal” — setting up a Mission Delivery Unit and drawing on the expertise of New Labour reformers including Sir Michael Barber, who worked for Tony Blair.
Starmer’s ambition is arguably bolder than in Blair’s first term, but the conditions are more challenging. A far tougher economic climate, the legacy of Covid-19, and growing geopolitical instability pose serious threats to success. But there is a wider moral purpose for delivering on Labour’s promises today. A lack of delivery breeds cynicism about democracy, which in turn fuels populism. This time, the stakes are so much higher. But what worked in the Blair era still offers some guidance.
In June 2001, New Labour had won a second election. But Blair, as he later admitted, had a feeling of his first term being wasted. One of his immediate actions after re-election was to task adviser-turned-civil-servant Barber with setting up the first ever Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit. Using Barber’s unpublished diaries and interviews with ministers and civil servants, it is possible to track how the team helped Blair to turn bold rhetoric into reality.
Because it did work — six months later, Blair’s principal private secretary Jeremy Heywood said to Barber: “You’ve massively increased the power of the prime minister without damaging any relationships.”
There was both a science and art to Barber’s method. The science, the consistent monitoring processes, would not have been possible in the human world of government without the art: the relentless relationship-building. The delivery unit was created as a device for the prime minister to enforce his will but it became mutually beneficial. It acted as what former cabinet minister David Blunkett calls a “transmission belt” to communicate problems back to Blair, which he could then unblock.
Remarkably, given the rivalry between Blair and his chancellor, Gordon Brown, the delivery unit became a tool for the Treasury too — Barber’s team even assessed the “deliverability” of new programmes in spending reviews.
There are potent parallels with Starmer’s current challenge. The scale of Blair’s victory had inflated public expectations about the scale and speed of change — sound familiar? Domestic crises then revealed how the system did and did not work. Fast forward to the second-term ambitious public service reform agenda — together with significant investment — and it again sounds much like today. The necessary quantum leap could not have been secured without a team dedicated to monitoring and speeding up progress on prime ministerial priorities in health, education, transport, crime and asylum.
By the summer of 2005, there was improvement in all priority areas. There were more teachers, nurses, doctors and police. Public service infrastructure had been renewed and expanded.
It’s not an exact match but there are clear lessons for the government today. After 14 years out of power, the 2024 election saw Labour win a landslide. Facing a restless and impatient public, the government has a plan for reformed and repaired public services, and significant investment.
Though Starmer can take lessons from history, there is no substitute for learning on the job. Blair journeyed from his first-term complaints of “scars on my back” to second-term humility. As he told a group of civil servants at the time: “You’ve probably got used to the idea that your career depends on me . . . I’m just coming to terms with the idea that my career depends on you.”