Earlier this week, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer unveiled Labour’s first legislative package in 14 years. The King’s Speech contained 40 legislative bills aimed at boosting economic growth with reforms to energy and planning, with Starmer setting out his plan to “take the breaks off Britain”.
The priorities set out by the new Government yesterday largely reflected its election manifesto commitments, with legislation on issues ranging from housebuilding and railways to the NHS.
After 14 years in opposition, Starmer’s first King’s Speech as Prime Minister provided an intriguing snapshot of what his Labour government might look like, and how it will govern.
While commitments to nationalisation, more centralised control of planning, greater powers afforded to workers and a new industrial strategy will remind many of past Labour governments, the explicit rejection of a tax-and-spend approach to government underlined the influence of Starmer’s Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and her long-promised iron-clad fiscal discipline.
Interestingly, the legislative package unveiled earlier this week was broadly welcomed across the political spectrum. Even the defeated Rishi Sunak, staying on as party leader until the next Conservative leader is elected, welcomed Starmer’s adoption of the gradual ban on smoking and Martyn’s Law, which requires venues to draw up a plan for a terrorist attack.
Both Sir Ed Davey for the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party’s co-leader Carla Denyer cautiously welcomed Labour’s plans, with the latter expressing “huge relief” that the programme was a break from “another deliberately divisive Tory list”.
However, not all commentators were so optimistic. The Sun’s Political Editor Harry Cole warned that the Government’s trade union reforms and new employment rights laws could result in businesses finding themselves wrapped up in unnecessary red tape.
But it was Lewis Goodall, formerly of the BBC and now a presenter on ‘The News Agents’ podcast who offered possibly the sharpest insight. Goodall said Starmer’s King’s Speech confirmed two things: that the new Government will “live or die on its theory that supply side measures in the economy can quickly boost growth” and that we have the “most reflexively interventionist government for decades.”
With so many new bills set to be introduced, and relatively little known about many of them, the pressure is now on the Government to launch consultations and gather the information it needs to truly kickstart its legislative activity in Parliament.
See below for a Pagefield overview of Starmer’s first legislative programme as Prime Minister, including reactions from across politics, the media and industry.
