As Keir Starmer stands down as prime minister and attention turns to Andy Burnham, the Labour Party faces a fundamental question about its economic vision. The party has three years left to get its strategy right, but critics argue it has lost its way since the landslide victory in July 2024.
Labour won on the promise of five national missions to tackle structural challenges, from clean energy to child poverty, inspired by the concept of mission-oriented government. However, the mission agenda has been treated as a communications exercise rather than a governing architecture. The Mission Delivery Unit, briefly established in the Cabinet Office, was dissolved in autumn 2025 and replaced with a team focused on three short-term priorities: reducing NHS waiting lists, securing the border, and tackling the cost of living.
The Treasury has failed to align its fiscal framework with mission goals, and the industrial strategy has reverted to identifying eight “high growth” sectors, contradicting the logic of missions. Defining economic growth as a mission itself is also seen as a mistake, as growth should be an outcome of well-designed missions that catalyse investment.
Despite these setbacks, some progress has been made. Rachel Reeves updated fiscal rules to consider what the UK owns, not just what it owes, and new bodies like the National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy were established. The Clean Power mission has seen low-carbon sources produce 73.3% of energy generation in 2025, up from 60.3% in 2023.
To fully deliver on the mission agenda, deeper state transformation is needed. A new report from the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose recommends five key changes, including re-establishing a central coordinating unit with real authority, further reforming fiscal rules to encourage long-term investment, and redesigning the industrial strategy around challenges rather than sectors.
