Generous pay deals for nurses, doctors and train drivers are close to the heart of the party. Junior doctors – currently in the middle of their 11th walkout over pay since March 2023 – might consider this fortuitous given that they have been demanding a 35 per cent pay rise.
Prime minister Starmer could guarantee innumerable standing ovations at this year’s Labour Party conference if he allowed the purse strings to be loosened for this particular good cause, and whatever misgivings the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, might have about such largesse, it would be amply balanced by the approval of Rayner.
Bringing back free movement
Five years after Labour was humiliated at the polls over (among other things) Brexit, it is the shadow of the EU that will continue to haunt the new administration.
Another key Starmer leadership pledge was to “defend free movement”, and given the Remainer mentality of the Labour Party – despite the 2016 result – the return of freedom of movement would be embraced by the entire party, not least the new cohort of MPs.
The former shadow Brexit secretary is certainly still known to want a “better” trade deal with our biggest trading partner, but has been strangely silent about how we will get one – leaving him vulnerable to Sunak’s attack during Wednesday’s television debate, that “all the things he’s talking about involve accepting more migrants, free movement by the back door”.
Starmer, of course, denied this claim, saying: “We are not going back into the EU, we’re not rejoining the Single Market or customs union, and we’re not accepting freedom of movement.”
But, with the benefit of a super-majority, and the potential support in this case of both Rayner and Reeves, things could soon change.
That he could get such a deal through Parliament is undeniable – with one major caveat. The Salisbury Convention means that the Lords will generally not oppose any measure that the new government had expressly committed to in its manifesto.
Freedom of movement is certainly not an election promise of the Labour Party, which means Starmer could face a tooth-and-claw battle with their lordships if he decides the policy is a price worth paying to improve our balance of trade.
Scrapping the two-child benefit cap
By far the most likely deviation from the published manifesto is the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap, the measure introduced by the Conservatives under David Cameron that prevents parents claiming key benefits for their third or subsequent children.
This is not just because it would be popular among Labour MPs and the party’s various trade union stakeholders, but because the manifesto itself is silent on the issue.
In 2020 Rayner said: “The obscene and inhumane two child cap must go.”
Reeves will have reservations about meeting the estimated £3.4 billion annual cost of scrapping the rule, but she may be persuaded by figures from the IFS that the policy already adversely affects two million children, with another 670,000 affected by the end of the next parliament if it remains in place.
As with every new spending commitment, that would risk pushing over a large, expensive domino that would have repercussions in other areas of policy.
Despite Labour attempts to convince us that it has “no plans” to raise taxes, any changes to make the welfare system more generous are likely to require additional revenue raising.
Renationalising Thames Water
In 2020 Starmer pledged to bring rail, mail, energy and water into “common ownership” – a promise designed to win the hearts of socialist MPs seeking the nationalisation of industries that have long been in private hands.
Given the public dissatisfaction with Thames Water and its dreadful record in sewage treatment, Starmer will surely come under pressure to renationalise the company, even at the risk of making its £18 billion of debt a public liability.
We may be about to see whether changing a company’s private status to public actually does have any practical impact on its behaviour and productivity.
Endorsing Stonewall’s rights agenda
One issue that has attracted an unexpected level of attention in this campaign, an issue that Starmer looks visibly uncomfortable discussing, is women’s rights, specifically in relation to the encroachment of those rights by trans people.
And while the Labour leader has been seen to move incrementally away from the position he previously adopted – support for self-ID for trans people and his ridicule-attracting comment that “99.9 per cent of women… haven’t got a penis” – he is regarded with deep suspicion by feminists, including the Harry Potter author JK Rowling and one of his own MPs, Rosie Duffield, who is standing for re-election in Canterbury.
Labour’s manifesto faces both ways on the trans issue. It promises a “trans-inclusive ban” on conversion practices, which is widely expected to endorse therapies that affirm the desires of individuals, including children, to adopt a new gender identity.
William Turner is a seasoned U.K. correspondent with a deep understanding of domestic affairs. With a passion for British politics and culture, he provides insightful analysis and comprehensive coverage of events within the United Kingdom.
