“People keep telling us that Grimsby is a shithole, but that’s not how we see it. We care about this place. We know we’ve got a future, we’ve got the people, we’ve got the energy, we just need a bit of support.” We were in the bar at Grimsby Town Football club in the spring of 2023 kicking off a workshop, one of several we held in the town before the general election. Two advisors to Keir Starmer – myself and Vidhya Alakeson, now deputy chief of staff in No 10 – were there to find out what the mission-led government proposal Starmer had launched in February of that year would mean in a “red wall” seat. And this was the blunt assessment of a local businesswoman.
Our host, Jason Stockwood, had recently bought the football club with a colleague and was now using it as an “anchor institution” to help generate new opportunities in the town. The assembled group of 20 local powerbrokers included the CEO of a local energy company, a doctor and the head of the new local youth hub. We began by asking the group to describe politics in one word. I knew trust was low, but was still taken aback by the response: “irrelevant, alienating, authoritarian, distant, negative, temporary, unbelievable, elitist, bear pit, repetitive, short-term thinking, inaccessible, polarising, self-serving, unambitious, not for working-class people, untrustworthy, a joke”. The wall was covered with flapping yellow post-it notes; not a single one with a positive message.
What did they want politics to be like? Again, the response was swift and clear. In some ways the answers were more striking, so removed were they from the existing political culture. “Long-term, realistic, grassroots, democratic, meaningful, passionate, local, accessible, hopeful, kind, engaged, relevant, more diverse, trustworthy, transparent, real, empowering.” We then got down to business, discussing the five missions Starmer had unveiled. These are long-term targets on economic growth, clean energy, crime, opportunity and health. What might Starmer’s missions mean in Grimsby and how would they make them work?
Ideas flowed. Connections were made between missions. The participants drew on the town’s history but projected forward to a future based on the growing renewables industry. “Stop wealth extraction – generate wealth in and for communities.” “Ask each area for its business plan, then fund it.” “Introduce a North Sea R&D fund.” The energy was infectious, the possibilities exciting. There was an appetite and an enthusiasm to work together with government to solve local problems. And they knew that Grimsby must take control of its own destiny, and not just wait for the government to hand things down. Yet, shadowing the optimism, there were some nagging questions from the participants. Do you really care? Are you really listening? Will you return?
This has been the problem at the heart of our political culture for too long: a remote government, a disaffected public, a cavernous gap between the two. Yet at the same time, there is a queue of people ready for the call, ready to be empowered, ready to be part of a national project. Across Britian there are more than 80 towns with populations between 75,000 and 150,000 people – places like Huddersfield, Paisley, West Bromwich, Nuneaton, Newport, Woking – each of them with challenges and possibilities, each with agents of change. Yet what comes out of government is seldom invitational. And a toxic Westminster political game – politicians jousting with a hostile media, fending off personal attacks, responding to crises real and manufactured – all adds to a sense that “they are all the same”, and “nothing ever changes”.
Bridging this divide is what mission-led government is all about. Before the election, Starmer saw the need for a fundamental rethink, ending sticking-plaster politics and providing ambitious 10-year goals – a north star that galvanises action in every community. It is critical that mission-led government lives up to that promise, not least after the betrayals of Grenfell Tower, infected blood and the Post Office. The prize is great: the chance to restore faith in politics and for working people to move beyond a life of surviving, to a life of thriving. That is why the prime minister is expected to renew the focus of these missions in a speech next week.
Each individual project within the missions – building homes, halving knife crime, reforming primary care – requires multiple players joining up across Whitehall departments, and devolving power to communities. A partnership to harness the dynamism of the private sector, the ingenuity of the public sector and the grassroots expertise of civil society. A common endeavour to rebuild the country. Their starting point is respect. This means ministers, civil servants, policy makers spending time in these places listening and learning. It is a quieter politics than the demagoguery of a Trump or Farage. But given time it can build trust, and real hope. Not a government on high, haughty and patronising, telling places like Grimsby what to do. But levelling the power dynamic, rebalancing the country towards working people and communities.
This is the project of the Starmer government, but it requires fundamental change. And we should be explicit about the barriers within the state. The first is that “missions” become the latest “buzz word” to mask business as usual, more lipstick on a pig. That is the gravitational pull inside government: a reliance on clunky Cabinet Committees where Ministers come to read out their prepared departmental brief, and resistance to expert outsiders because their presence will “destabilise civil service processes”. It is astonishing how many permanent secretaries still think this way. A set of incentives that mean “passing legislation” counts for more than change on the ground. The last government told civil servants to think up “announceables” rather than “deliverables”, a sign it had been entirely performative.
The alternative, and the intention behind the missions, is that they serve as a battering ram for a more agile and urgent state. Each mission project therefore needs to be set up as a task force. Strong leadership is essential: a CEO figure for each project who will be there for the duration of the parliament, has a direct route to the secretary of state or in some cases the Prime Minister, and who feels “on the hook” for achieving results. That leader needs to be the person in the country with the best chance of achieving outcomes. And because civil servants are mostly generalists, frequently promoted out of their area of expertise, the best person to lead may well be an outsider.
In support, that person needs two things – money and people. This requires a different stance from the Treasury, and a break with tradition. The upcoming spending review needs to start not with departmental negotiations as is usual, but with agreement on the mission priorities and their allocated resources. In the past the Treasury has not given any value to policy that requires upfront funding to save money in the long run. This is starting to change and is vital to the government’s emerging principles of public service reform, which include a clear aim of “prevention first”. Money needs to be set aside for concrete prevention policies that will further the missions: early diagnosis in the community to save on expensive hospital care; new youth hubs to stop young people getting dragged into knife crime. There also need to be longer funding settlements – for example five years – to give the mission projects certainty and the chance to plan ahead.
The task force leader needs to be able to hire the best talent and construct a multi-disciplinary team with particular skills. A technology expert who can look at any problem through the lens of new technology, AI and scientific breakthrough, asking the vital questions of how can we use technology to speed this up, save money and give the citizen a better experience. Data analysts who can find out what is really going on not what we assume might be going on. Project managers with the skill to co-ordinate complex projects.
These taskforces need to create momentum towards the mission goals, freed from the burdens of bureaucracy. As Kate Bingham, the successful head of the Covid-19 vaccine taskforce, reflected in her Romanes Lecture at Oxford University in 2021: “The problem was compounded by the tacit and explicit incentives set for individual officials by the culture and practices of the civil service… I saw an almost obsessive desire among officials to avoid any suggestion of personal error or scope for criticism, and a concern amounting to paranoia about media handling and the possible public reaction. This created groupthink and a massive aversion to risk, which in turn held back innovation and the pace of execution. Officials are not generally rewarded for specialist skills, flair or drive, but for following correct procedures. Individual energizers and doers were outnumbered by officials able to think of reasons not to do something.” It is striking that Bingham was finding this, even at a time of national emergency – even when she was reporting directly to the Prime Minister.
So, the most important change for the new Labour government is to create a culture of innovation. This is hard: innovation is by its nature a question of trial and error. Yet there is currently a very low tolerance of failure in politics. Individuals fear being crucified by an unforgiving media or, understandably, worry about wasting taxpayer’s money. There are some good signs that this culture might change. A sum of £100m was allocated in the Budget for test-and-learn innovation projects within public services. The Chancellor’s announcement of a social impact investment vehicle to establish partnerships between investors, the voluntary sector and the state is also vital for the missions’ long-term funding.
The forthcoming Cabinet Secretary appointment is similarly an opportunity to put in place a radical reformer who understands that the civil service needs to be outward facing. This must be part of a strong and renewed centre of government that restores a proper strategic capacity to stop day to day needs driving out vital medium and long-term thinking. But to ensure Whitehall has an umbilical cord to local communities, there needs to be a “Grimsby Test”: a set of processes in which local voices are embedded into all decisions. Deliberative forums to ensure the trade-offs – whether on planning, NHS reorganisation, new policing methods or taxation – are thought through on the ground. Each mission project should be twinned with one town or more so that politicians and task forces have a direct feedback loop – and local people can suggest how the policy should be adapted. Centralised delivery, and old-style transactional politics will not be enough. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have found that; Emmanuel Macron too. More is needed. An empowering state offering a real partnership with voters and communities.
Two weeks before the election, Keir Starmer met with the same group of people, in the same venue, with the backdrop of the newly laid turf at Grimsby Town Football Club. It was a rare meeting in the election with no media, solely for Starmer to find out more about what was happening on the ground in one of the seats Labour desperately needed to win. The group were reassured that the dialogue we had begun over a year ago was culminating in a meeting with the man who was about to become Prime Minister.
But this didn’t stop them being frank. One spoke for many when she said: “Watching Westminster politics is embarrassing and heartbreaking. It feels like the whole thing is just a game. Solving problems will hopefully build some trust, but politicians need to realise our lives are not a game.” There is an answer to this perception: a mission-led government underpinned by respect. “A decade of national renewal” will only be possible if we heed the words of Labour’s constitution, “by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone”. It is a project that needs to succeed to restore belief in politics and government. Because we can see the alternative all around us already: a far-right populist politics as seductive as it is corrosive.
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