Sir Keir Starmer has delivered his ‘Plan for Change’ at Pinewood Studios.

Five missions, six first steps, two priorities and now six ‘milestones’. Lists of promises are inherently risky. Easy to lampoon, difficult to measure (often deliberately so) and hostages to fortune. Just ask Rishi Sunak and his undelivered 2023 ‘promise’ to ‘stop the boats’, which many in his party believe contributed to his crushing defeat in July. Not just because the target was unachievable, but because it highlighted the problem to the benefit of his political foes.

So why has the Prime Minister done it?

First the six milestones themselves:

• Raising living standards in every part of the United Kingdom, so working people have more money in their pocket as we aim to deliver the highest sustained growth in the G7.

• Building 1.5 million homes in England and fast-tracking planning decisions on at least 150 major economic infrastructure projects.

• Ending hospital backlogs to meet the NHS standard of 92% of patients in England waiting no longer than 18 weeks for elective treatment.

• Putting police back on the beat with a named officer for every neighbourhood, and 13,000 additional officers, PCSOs and special constables in neighbourhood roles in England and Wales.

• Giving children the best start in life, with a record 75% of 5-year-olds in England ready to learn when they start school.

• Securing home-grown energy, protecting billpayers, and putting us on track to at least 95% Clean Power by 2030, while accelerating the UK to net zero.

Labour is at pains to stress that the new milestones, to be achieved by the end of the Parliament, don’t replace the Government’s five manifesto missions (first announced in Opposition 18 months ago) but are milestones towards them. Behind the scenes the cross-Government mission ‘boards’ of Ministers are indeed meeting regularly and tasking Whitehall officials to deliver the missions.

And that’s one of the two key reasons Starmer has done this. Seven months in to his Government, and suffering in the opinion polls, there is palpable frustration within his senior team and amongst Labour MPs that the machine of Government can be frustratingly slow. Some of Starmer’s more memorable phrases this morning channelled his inner Liz Truss; “Too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”. Starmer knows that his own MPs – let alone the voters - will struggle to memorise the six milestones but that’s not the point. Whitehall officials will now be expected to deliver them, and quickly.

So today’s speech is in many ways a reaction to the realities of government, and the stuttering performance of the state in general, hence the reference to falling public sector productivity, and the frustrations of the planning system seen as holding back plans for everything from new homes to wind farms and rail lines; “we have long freeloaded on the British genius of the past because we won’t build for the future” was the best line in Starmer’s speech. Labour will struggle to hit the living standards, house building or clean energy milestones without reforming the planning system – and they know it. These realities might explain why the milestones are weaker in rhetoric and substance than the original missions. The 100% clean energy by 2030 mission has been watered down to a ‘at least 95%’ in today’s milestone. Politicians ‘campaign in poetry and govern in prose’ as former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously said.

Indeed, the momentous events in US politics is the other key driver of today. Starmer and his Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, are haunted by what happened to the Democrats. President Biden did actually deliver the highest economic growth in the G7 (Labour’s number one mission) but that didn’t stop the Democrats being punished by the US electorate, not enough of whom felt the benefit in their own lives.

It is telling that while Labour’s growth mission remains, today’s milestone is that ‘working people have more money in their pocket’. The thinking here is that GDP is an abstract, irrelevant concept but living standards and rising energy bills are real. McSweeney thinks that the US elections confirms his view that Labour will face the wrath of an increasingly volatile electorate in 2029 unless voters experience lower NHS waiting times, more police on their streets, and affordable homes – all without feeling the pinch of higher taxes.

What of the Conservatives? Not unreasonably, they describe Starmer’s milestones speech as an ‘emergency reset’ but there is little outward evidence so far that Kemi Badenoch’s party have begun to confront the lessons of their electoral defeat. There is a risk for the Conservatives that they take solace in Labour’s unpopularity instead of undertaking a thorough policy review of their own.

Both main parties know they must confront the challenge of Reform UK, but Labour think that delivering on everyday issues is the way to do so rather than trying to outdo Reform on immigration – covered in today’s document but not in the milestones. ‘Populism isn’t the answer to Britain’s problems’ declared Starmer, but that doesn’t mean voters won’t be tempted by the appeal of Nigel Farage, perhaps supercharged by Elon Musk’s money. Today was Labour’s plan to deal both with this threat, and to reset the narrative against the Conservatives.

Can Labour deliver?