Britain’s new leader already has an overflowing in-tray.
LONDON — The message was clear in Keir Starmer ’s first speech as U.K. prime minister. “The work of change begins immediately.”
But the issue has been given new urgency by the huge number of Brits who voted for Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party, which came third in the popular vote in last Thursday’s election. The Labour leadership knows that repairing the NHS is another front on which the government will be judged from day 1. | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
Labour has already committed to keeping the previous Conservative government’s early-release scheme in place to ease levels of overcrowding, and plans to revamp planning laws to make it faster to build new prisons.More controversially, the PM has also promised to undertake a review of sentencing. One of Starmer’s first appointments over the weekend was James Timpson as prisons minister; Timpson is a businessman who runs a chain of key-cutting shops which employ and assist ex-offenders.
Starmer’s winning manifesto also committed to building 1.5 million new homes over the next parliament, focused on using brownfield sites as well as the “grey belt” — scrubland on the outskirts of British towns or disused petrol stations that have been officially designated green belt. Keir Starmer will also meet metro mayors across England — all but one of whom are now drawn from the Labour Party. | Henry Nicholls/Getty Images
Starmer will also meet metro mayors across England — all but one of whom are now drawn from the Labour Party — in advance of his plans for greater regional devolution, expected as one of the meatier items to feature in the King’s Speech. But he will face uncomfortable questions over local government finance, with as many as 200 local authorities currently on the verge of going bust.After years of tension and acrimony between the U.K.
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