All I want for Christmas is economic growth
Keir Starmer has quietly abandoned his “five missions”, now he should dispense with all policies that are standing in the way of growth, starting with the Employment Rights Bill, says Joe Hill
As we ring out 2025 and ring in 2026, it’s good to reflect on what we’re leaving behind as well as looking to the future. After just 18 months in office, it’s a surprise how many of their headline policies the government has dropped. Welfare reform, key reforms in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, and their commitment to not raise tax on working people for a start. They’ve learned, quickly, one of the most important lessons for running organisations – that they can’t do everything and have to prioritise.
Nowhere is this more obvious than the quiet abandoning of their “mission-driven” approach to government. The Prime Minister was propelled into power promising change, with five big missions – safer streets, cleaner energy, greater opportunities, a healthier society and higher growth. In his own words “every one a single necessary step on a longer journey”.
But now with little to show for progress on any of those missions, the idea has been adapted. The phrase only appears at big set pieces as “the defining mission of this government… to grow the economy”. Those other four missions? Suddenly they seem a lot less important.
Looking ahead to 2026, growth is the right area for them to pick. For all the growth-boosting measures the Chancellor announced at Budget, it’s telling that the OBR didn’t score any of them as having enough of an impact to adjust their forecast – instead, revising growth estimates down. We’re not set to get richer any time soon.
Everything else the government wants to do will cost them – money at least, or if not a lot of political capital. It’s much easier to pay for big political objectives like defence and energy transition if you have more money to spend in the first place.
Some of the original advocates for mission-driven government wanted to deliver all their missions by significantly expanding the public finances, fuelled by much more borrowing, so that governments could make much bigger “investments” in the economy. But as the government faces down the risk of a bond market crisis, it’s become apparent that nobody wants to lend us that kind of money any more – because most of these investments are really just giveaways.
The idea of the missions won’t get the post-mortem they deserve. In a couple of years time, its defenders will re-emerge to claim that “real mission-driven government has never been tried”, forgetting how this idea from opposition struggled so profoundly against the economic realities of governing
But few people in Westminster seem to have noticed. The idea of the missions won’t get the post-mortem they deserve. In a couple of years time, its defenders will re-emerge to claim that “real mission-driven government has never been tried”, forgetting how this idea from opposition struggled so profoundly against the economic realities of governing.
Now that growth is the only game in town, the government needs to take a hard look against the rest of its policy programme, stopping the projects which will hinder growth and starting some new ones to drive it.
A New Year’s resolution? Cut taxes
Putting aside the tax rises in the Budget and looking to the future, they should think about how they can cut the most economically damaging taxes in future Budgets. Stamp Duty is probably the worst-designed tax there is – it stops people moving houses, preventing people from downsizing to free up stock which they don’t need and front-loads the cost of moving to a bigger house onto the shoulders of the buyer.
Taking the Employment Rights Bill out of the legislative programme would show that the government realises businesses matter for generating growth. The flexibility of the British job market was key to the economy’s recovery after the financial crisis. Reversing that and making it riskier for businesses to hire new people, puts growth at even greater risk.
The Prime Minister is absolutely right to go further and faster on building housing and infrastructure, and a second Planning and Infrastructure Bill is already overdue. But he needs to take a look at why his own government is still trying to deliver a Bill which will be dead on arrival, with too little (and possibly too late) to meet their housebuilding targets. They should create the conditions for building with more permissive systems which rely less on case-by-case discretion, and roll back the previous government’s damaging Building Safety Regulator which has brought new housing development in London to a halt.
There are plenty of other areas too. Making good on their target of cutting regulatory costs for businesses by 25 per cent would be a start – there has been little obvious progress in the six months since it was announced, and with the Employment Rights Bill and a new Independent Football Regulator, the government is going backwards not forwards. If growth is not just a mission, but the mission, then that should mean something. My Christmas wish is that in 2026 the government realises that.
Joe Hill is policy director at Re:State