A hole in the heart of plans.will hit 670,000 children

“Rebuilding our country will not happen overnight,” Keir Starmer said in his introduction to the King’s Speech yesterday. The challenges we face require determined, patient work and serious solutions, rather than the temptation of the easy answer.”

- ANDREW GRICE

The list of 40 bills reinforced the image of a government that has successfully hit the ground running. But the prime minister’s words were revealing: the speech is also an attempt to buy time, until Labour has the money needed to fund the “decade of renewal” he wants.

So the government is right to prioritise measures to boost growth such as reforming the planning laws to speed up infrastructure projects and housebuilding. Without that, Starmer will lack the revenue to rebuild public services – the “change” that many voters elected the government to make.

But many of yesterday’s proposals are from the “no cost or low cost” list Labour drew up in opposition, and there’s a problem: will voters really notice a difference? There’s a stark contrast, for example, between Tony Blair’s 1997 pledge to reduce class sizes to under 30 for children aged five to seven and Starmer’s promise to recruit 6,500 more teachers. Blair’s move was visible to pupils and parents, while Starmer’s limited pledge has been described as a third of a teacher for every school.