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The author is a lecturer in government studies at the Strand Group at King’s College London and is the author of The Art of Delivery.
Almost a year after labor gained power, Ir Kiel reflects a sense of dissatisfaction. “We didn’t always talk about ourselves,” he said. However, once he entered Downing Street, the prime minister quickly began to lay the foundations for providing “national renewal.” He established a mission delivery unit and used the expertise of new labor reformers, including Ir Michael Barber, who worked at Tony Blair.
Starmer’s Ambition is undoubtedly bolder than Blair’s first term, but the conditions are even more difficult. Much harsh economic situations, Covid-19 legacy, and increasing geopolitical instability pose a serious threat to success. However, there is a broader moral purpose to provide the promises of today’s workers. The lack of birth produces cynicism about democracy, which promotes populism. This time, the stakes are much higher. But those who worked in the Blair era still offer some guidance.
In June 2001, New Labor won its second election. But, as Blair later admitted, he had the feeling that his first term wasted. One of his immediate actions after reelection was a skilled citizen barber who turned to task advisor after establishing the first ever prime minister’s delivery unit. Barber’s unpublished diary and interviews with ministers and civil servants can be used to track how the team helped Blair turn bold rhetoric into reality.
That worked, and six months later, Blair’s principal Jeremy Haywood told Barber: “You have greatly increased the prime minister’s power without damaging the relationship.”
Barber’s methods included both science and art. Science, a consistent surveillance process, would not have been a relentless relationship building in the human world of an artless government. The delivery units were created as devices for the Prime Minister to enforce his will, but they became mutually beneficial. It acted as a former Minister, Minister David Blanket, who communicated the issue to Blair, calling it the “transmission belt.”
Surprisingly, given the rivalry between Blair and his prime minister, Gordon Brown, the delivery unit has also become a tool for the Treasury. Barber’s team evaluated the “delivery potential” of a new program that spends reviews.
There are strong similarities between current challenges of priorities. The scale of Blair’s victory raised public expectations about the scale and speed of change. The domestic crisis then revealed how the system worked and did not. Along with massive investments, we fast forward to the second term’s ambitious public services reform agenda, and it sounds the same today. The required quantum leap could not have been secured without a team dedicated to monitoring and speeding up the Prime Minister’s priorities in health, education, transportation, crime and asylum.
By the summer of 2005, improvements had been made in all priority areas. There were more teachers, nurses, doctors and police. Public service infrastructure was updated and expanded.
That’s not an exact match, but there are clear lessons in government today. After 14 years of power, Labour won a landslide in the 2024 election. Faced with a restless and impatient mass, the government has plans and large investments for reformed and repaired public services.
Priorities can take lessons from history, but there is no alternative to job learning. Blair traveled from his first-term complaints of “scars on my back” to the humility of the second-term. As he told a group of civil servants at the time, “You’ve probably got used to the idea that your career depends on me.
