Will Labour's Governance Approach Lead to Mission Success or Mission Failure?

Since coming to power in July 2024, the Starmer government’s approach to reform has rhetorically focussed on the centralised, short-term, and fragmented nature of British policymaking and the need ‘re-wire’ the state. This approach – encapsulated in its ‘mission-led’ approach to governance – has emphasised an economic policy predicated on a long-term industrial strategy and a devolution agenda framed as decentralising power. In this article, we undertake a closer analysis of both, to argue they fall short in addressing a series of longstanding governance pathologies. On economic policy, there has been little challenge to Treasury control, and a failure to fully address short-termism. The devolution agenda, meanwhile, places regional authorities in service of central government, reproducing top-down delegated authority. We suggest that, despite Labour’s awareness of some of the problems of the British state, its attempts to tackle them are at best selective and do not go far enough in terms of a radical reform of Britain’s governing institutions and constitutional arrangements.