When Keir Starmer announced his ‘measurable milestones’ yesterday, he called them ‘the most ambitious and credible programme for government in a generation’. But are they really so ambitious? Many of them sound remarkably similar to the missions in the Conservatives’ Levelling Up white paper, published just under three years ago – only less detailed and lacking a focus on improving the worst-performing areas of the country. Starmer has six milestones compared with the white paper’s 12 missions and 51 metrics.
On living standards, Starmer promised that they will be ‘higher in every region of the country’. Which sounds very much like the white paper promise that ‘pay, employment and productivity will have risen in every area of the UK’ by 2030 – as well the gap between the top-performing and other areas having closed.
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