What are Labour’s six promises and how likely is their success?

Keir Starmer has unveiled six pledges which he said would be the first steps a Labor government would take. The Labor leader was reluctant to use the word “pledge” but the six statements inevitably drew comparisons with Tony Blair’s 1997 pledge card.

However, unlike Labour’s election promises, the steps Starmer outlined were generally vague and their success is likely to prove difficult to measure.

Ensure economic stability

Labor is pursuing an ambitious economic policy: achieving the highest sustainable growth in the G7. Interestingly, this is not the pledge that appeared on the poster for Starmer’s event on Thursday.

Instead, the party is prioritizing the more cautious and vague “economic stability” – a promise that highlights the volatility caused by Liz Truss’s tenure in Downing Street, but whose success will be much harder to assess.

Labor frontbenchers are locked in debates over whether the party should prioritize economic stability if it comes to power, or push for growth, perhaps with higher spending and lower taxes. The fact that stability has made it onto the promise card shows the direction Starmer is leaning.

Reduce waiting times on the NHS

Reducing NHS waiting times may sound like a vague promise, but it addresses fourteen different targets that the health service is currently missing, and in some cases has never achieved.

The pledges include ambulances responding within seven minutes to the most serious incidents, compared with the current average of eight minutes. Labor also promises that 95% of people attending A&E will be seen and transferred or discharged within four hours – far exceeding expectations. the current figure of 74%.

Another pledge says that 96% of cancer patients will wait a month or less between a doctor’s decision to treat them and starting treatment. Currently that’s true for only 91% of patients.

Launch a new border security command

Starmer faced some criticism after launching his missions last year for not including one on migration. Since then, Rishi Sunak has tried to make the issue central to his pre-election speech to voters by relaunching the government’s plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Labor has pledged to scrap the Rwanda plan and use the savings to pay for a new border security command, staffed with hundreds of additional special investigators, intelligence officers and cross-border police officers. Labor wants to focus on prosecuting people smugglers who help bring migrants across the Channel, rather than deporting those who arrive here.

In contrast to Sunak’s promise to completely stop small boat crossings, Starmer is only promising to set up the Border Command. He did not say how to judge its success.

Set up Great British Energy

Starmer’s original pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green investment has been reduced to less than £15 billion. Most of that money will go towards creating a green energy champion known as Great British Energy, which allies of shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband say was the most important aspect of the original pledge.

Labor has pledged to set up Scotland’s energy company within its first 100 days in power, with a mandate to invest in clean energy programmes. The initial focus will be on advanced technologies that private sector investors may find too risky, and on community energy programs that they may find too small.

Setting up the business will be the easy part. Labor also promises the country will have carbon-free electricity by 2030, which will prove more difficult and expensive.

Address antisocial behavior

Labor has a measurable target in tackling crime: halving serious violent crime and raising confidence in the police to the highest levels. But this is not the promise on posters across the country.

Instead, the party has decided to prioritize a much vaguer crackdown on antisocial behavior. Labor has promised a range of measures, including ‘respect orders’ for adults who repeatedly engage in anti-social behaviour, introducing youth mentors and mental health professionals into schools, and new penalties for tippers.

Tackling anti-social behavior is likely to prove much easier than solving some of the more entrenched problems in the criminal justice system, as the capacity of prisons and courts is virtually non-existent and can only be improved with large amounts of additional money.

Recruit 6,500 teachers

Starmer’s education pledge is the only one with an actual grade attached to it. The party has pledged to recruit another 6,500 teachers, which it will pay for with the money it generates by raising taxes on private schools.

Labor will not say how quickly it will recruit the extra teachers. Assuming it plans to do so in the first year of government, this would be a lofty target, but not unprecedented. From 2021-22 to 2022-23, the number of full-time equivalent teaching posts in schools passed by 2,844. Two years earlier, as the country emerged from the pandemic, the number of teaching posts increased by 7,285.

Recruiting more teachers could prove difficult in the short term if wages do not rise across the sector, something Labor will be reluctant to allow given public sector funding constraints.