Keir Starmer sets out six Labour pledges ahead of general election

Sir Keir Starmer will unveil a ­six-point plan for Britain under Labour today with an updated version of Tony Blair’s election-winning pledge card.

In an effort to distil Labour’s detailed policies into a “retail offer” to voters, Starmer will set out the “first steps” he will take if he becomes prime minister.

The plan echoes the five pledges made by Blair in 1997, which included cutting NHS waiting times, improving education and cracking down on ­antisocial behaviour.

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Starmer has included a sixth pledge, to tackle illegal migration, in the hope of heading off Conservative claims that his party is soft on dealing with small boat crossings.

Although the pledge card gives no specific new policies, strategists said it was designed to make existing plans clearer to voters. Starmer told ­shadow cabinet ministers yesterday that the pledges were “a down payment on change — on our ­determination to begin a decade of national renewal”.

The promises on the card are: to deliver economic stability; cut NHS waiting times; launch a new border security command; set up Great British Energy; crack down on antisocial behaviour; and to recruit 6,500 new teachers.

“Great British Energy” refers to Starmer’s promise of a new, ­publicly owned green energy company to bring down bills. “Economic­ ­stability” will be delivered through plans to keep taxes, inflation and mortgages “as low as possible”. There will be no mention of ­Labour’s workers’ reforms or of its controversial promise to change planning rules to build 1.5 million homes in the next five years.

A party spokesman stressed that those commitments remained. “The national minimum wage was not on the pledge card in 1997,” he said, “but it was one of the most important achievements of the Labour government.” The six pledges were “not the sum total of our ambition”, the spokesman said, adding: “The danger is you might end up communicating less, not more.”

Credit card-sized pledge cards will feature the six “first steps for change”, as well as a black and white picture of Starmer in a shirt with his sleeves rolled up. Voters in target constituencies will see advertisements on billboards and in regional newspapers in what Labour said would be its biggest marketing spend since the 2019 election.

The “first steps” are to be achieved within five years, but no more specific time frames will be given.

Polling and focus groups have been used to hone the messages Labour thinks it needs to win over swing voters in seats across the “red wall” and in more traditional Tory territory. Labour strategists want to make Starmer a greater feature of the party’s campaign by focusing on presenting him as a candidate to be prime minister.

Starmer will launch the pledge card today in Essex, where Labour has no MPs. The county is being targeted in an effort to win over the modern equivalent of Blair’s “Essex man” — working-class voters who had stuck with the Tories in 1992.

Labour insiders sought to head off criticism that the six pledges amounted to little more than a relaunch of Starmer’s existing missions. A party spokesman accused Rishi Sunak of switching strategies “every month”, saying he had adopted stances including “Mr Change, Mr Continuity, Mr Security”. He added that Starmer’s six pledges were “firmly based on the strategy we set out in the five missions last year”.

Labour hopes to counteract Sunak’s claim this week that Starmer is a threat to national security, by putting more emphasis on plans to sort out illegal migration.

A Border Security Command promised by Starmer last week on a trip to Dover with the new Labour MP Natalie Elphicke will feature on his list of pledges. Hundreds more specialist officers and greater counterterrorism powers were promised to “smash the criminal boat gangs”.

Senior figures within Labour denied that this pledge was weaker than ­Sunak’s promise, made in January last year, to “stop the boats”. One said: “The difference between us and the Tories on this is — we have a plan for the whole problem, they have a plan for 1 per cent of the problem.”

Voters in Wales and Scotland will get a slightly tweaked version of the six pledges, given that some areas among them are devolved to the nations’ respective governments.

Richard Holden, the Conservative Party chairman, accused Starmer of making his 16th relaunch since becoming Labour leader in April 2020.

Holden said Starmer “still [has] no coherent plan” and that Labour supported an asylum amnesty, had made “colossal” unfunded spending commitments and would raise taxes, taking the country “back to square one”.

Blair’s five-point pledge sealed deal

In 1997 Tony Blair’s five-point pledge card was credited with helping Labour seal the deal with voters (Aubrey Allegretti writes). So it is no surprise that Sir Keir Starmer has taken a leaf from Blair’s playbook with his “six first steps” for Britain.

It is designed to be a simple, tangible and reassuring expression of what a Labour government would do, targeted at those who do not pay much attention to politics. It is also designed not to promise too much. As one Labour source put it, in the mood they are in, voters wouldn’t believe them if they did.

Controversial policies such as workers’ rights and plans to change the planning laws to build 1.5 million homes in the next five years were not included in the “first steps” plan. The risk to the strategy is that voters feel underwhelmed by Labour’s offer.

Privately, some in the party fear that Starmer does not have the political mastery of Blair in 1997 and his ability to embody change without promising very much. Yet, with a 20-point poll lead, Starmer and Reeves are determined not to take risks, and promising too much seems riskier than promising too little.