As Keir Starmer prepares to hand over the keys to No 10 to Andy Burnham, his team has been in 'legacy-building' mode, announcing a raft of policies. But which decisions will truly stand the test of time? Here are three that are likely to endure.
The Hillsborough Law
Perhaps more than any other single policy, Starmer considered passing the Hillsborough Law a personal mission. After many months of wrangling over the extent to which it should apply to the security services, the bill finally passed the House of Commons on Tuesday. If it gets all the way through the Parliamentary process, the law would impose a 'duty of candour' on public officials, meaning they can be prosecuted if they lie or evade in a public inquiry. Attorney General Richard Hermer said it will 'radically change the relationship between those who govern and the people they govern, forever'.
Renters' Rights
Keir Starmer's government did not come up with the idea of scrapping no-fault evictions for renters, but it did manage to get it into law. A key consideration for this thought experiment is which policies provided such a dramatic, beneficial change to so many people that it's hard to imagine them being undone. Overnight, at the start of May this year, renters in England found themselves no longer bound by a fixed-term contract and no longer liable to be evicted for no reason at short notice. That's pretty solid.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
Yes – it's a rogue choice. But SMRs could end up transforming how the UK gets its electricity in the coming decades, and we might have to credit Starmer for that. It was his government who allowed these little power stations to be built anywhere in the country, not just designated nuclear sites, and awarded Rolls-Royce the contract to start designing the tech. Once up and running, which could be a while away, they should reduce the UK's reliance on fossil fuels – though climate campaigners are still concerned about nuclear waste. The government has also suggested they could help serve power-hungry AI datacentres, which (like them or not) are bound to become crucially important in the not-so-distant future.
