British politicians often find much to admire in English local government. Margaret Thatcher liked Wandsworth Council, which kept taxes low. David Cameron’s austerity programme was presaged in Barnet, known as the “easyJet council” for its no-frills approach. Jeremy Corbyn’s circle liked Preston’s municipal socialism. Sir Keir Starmer may well hold up Camden in north London.
That is not just because the north London borough is the Labour leader’s home and covers his constituency of Holborn and St Pancras. Nor because the council’s leader, Georgia Gould, is a candidate for Parliament and a name to watch in a future Labour government. It is also because Camden has been experimenting with a model that Sir Keir says will be central to his plans to transform the state without spending much money.
Should he form a majority government after the general election on July 4th (a scenario to which our model gives a 93% probability), Sir Keir intends for it to pursue five “missions”—among them decarbonising the electricity network by 2030 and elevating gdp growth per capita to the highest in the g7. In office these will be the projects by which government activity is organised. The idea is to break down a culture of short-termism and fiefdoms within Whitehall. Or as Sir Keir told The Economist a year ago: “[They are] a way to answer all questions. Are we going to do A or B? Well, economic growth is mission number one, the central most important mission. And therefore, if the answer is it helps with that mission, then the answer is yes.”
The concept of missions has been popularised by Mariana Mazzucato, an economist, who argues that the mobilising principles behind the moon landings or the race for covid-19 vaccines can be applied to other policy challenges. Dr Mazzucato worked with Ms Gould and the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London to apply such thinking to Camden as it was recovering from the pandemic. The four “missions” they adopted in 2021 are, by definition, more local than Sir Keir’s objectives: improving locals’ diets, fixing up its estates, making the council leadership more diverse and increasing job opportunities for young people.
The missions suit Sir Keir who is much more a public-sector administrator than an ideologue. But, as Dr Mazzucato notes in a new paper for the Future Governance Forum, they require a huge culture change in Whitehall—from “top down, command and control management” to a “more humble mode of statecraft” that requires the government being an “orchestrator” of outside actors, and that is tolerant of disagreement.
But their success will ultimately stand or fall on politics, reckons one Labour figure. Sir Keir has been willing to adopt and drop policies; the one constant has been his determination to win the upcoming election. If he and the cabinet conclude that delivering the missions are the means by which Labour gets re-elected in 2029 then they are indeed likely to be the lodestars of his government. If they are seen as a distraction to that goal, they may wither.
