Labour's 'Project Chainsaw' begins by abolishing NHS England – will it backfire?

The abolition of NHS England, the world’s largest quango, is part of Keir Starmer’s “Project Chainsaw” to tackle a “weaker” but “ever-expanding state”, says Beth Rigby on Sky News. He also intends to get rid of regulators, slash red tape and use artificial intelligence (AI).

Every arm’s-length state body is up for review. Welfare secretary Liz Kendall also announced benefit reforms that she hopes will save £5 billion annually by 2030. Starmer is prepared to fight not just “blockers” and “NIMBYs” but also his own party, public-sector workers and the unions in the knowledge that if his government fails to deliver, the winners will be Reform UK or “even a revived” Tory opposition.

How Labour is fighting the flab

By prioritising fiscal prudence over social policy, he has set the scene for a “showdown” with the left of his party, though his 168-strong Commons majority does provide a cushion, says Joe Mayes on Bloomberg. Starmer’s attack on the “flabby state” has come as a shock, but for most of the modern left’s history, anti-bureaucratic politics has in fact been a “core principle”, says Thomas Peermohamed Lambert in The New Statesman.

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And if Starmer can “harness some of the justified animus towards NHS England” and direct it to other bureaucratic “nuisances” such as “corrupt procurement structures, murky public-private partnerships and powerful lobbying machines”, he might succeed not just in emulating the antibureaucratic right, but in beating them, too.

Starmerite centrism is “a historical reset” for the party, says Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. He wants to make the party the “natural home” for economically insecure workers uneasy about perceived generosity to the poorest at home and abroad. In part, Labour is driven by expediency: the worsening economic backdrop coupled with a need to stick to Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules.

The problem, in practice, is that the government’s ability to “rewire” the economy “tends to be limited in the extreme” and it often does a “bad job”. Alarmingly, the labour market is “softening fast” and “much of the rest of Labour’s economic agenda” is aimed at “squeezing out the lower-paid jobs that are most likely to suit someone with a thin work history and health problems”, says The Economist. Changes to national insurance and the minimum wage mean “cheap” labour will cost 5% more in April.

It’s hard not to feel sorry for Reeves, says Martin Wolf, also in the Financial Times. As she presides over a stagnant economy with high indebtedness, she could either game her self-imposed new fiscal rules or relax them. Both would look “ridiculous”. The alternative would be for her and Starmer to say that this is a new world and we need to borrow more for defence, while also raising “broad-based taxes on income, sales and property” and going even further with spending cuts.

At the same time, the government must pursue pro-growth deregulation and investment, and embrace EU initiatives and new technologies. “The country needs leadership. A bold government would state that the constraints we have lived under on taxation, spending and regulation need to be reassessed. Times have changed. So must we.”

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