Be careful, Sir Keir: you risk “resetting” yourself to fail.

WWhen Keir Starmer unveils his “plan for change” tomorrow, he will emphasize his full commitment to public sector reform.

But his announcement of “measurable milestones” in six policy areas – living standards; the NHS; housing construction; education; crime; and green energy – has already provoked intense debate within the cabinet.

Some ministers fear the new targets will make it harder to implement the reforms that will be needed when the government cannot afford to throw money at public services’ many problems.

They fear that pursuing the new targets – to avoid being missed in the headlines – will drain so much government energy and money that it leaves little room for reform.

There is a place and an argument for targets. Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, is banking on delivering better public services that will improve people’s lives. He is convinced that this is the key to staving off the very real populist threat that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party poses to the Labor Party.

Despite Starmer’s strong rhetoric on reform, some Blairites privately doubt Starmer’s commitment to reform. “We have a rhetorical commitment to reform, but it’s not enough,” one told me. This issue could escalate tensions between Starmer and the Blairites, as my colleague John Rentoul highlighted this weekend.

Although Tony Blair set targets in his first term, he came to believe they were not enough and placed emphasis on structural reform of the public sector. In his autobiographyBlair said his initial focus on “standards, not structures” was not enough: “Unless you change the structures, you can’t raise standards more than incrementally. »

Above all, Blair benefited from a growing economy and healthy public finances that Starmer lacked to invest in reform from the start. For Starmer, changes to make public services more efficient will become even more important if the government fails to lift the UK’s sluggish growth levels above current forecasts.

Although Team Starmer insists that the targets and reform are not mutually exclusive, it will be difficult to live up to his rhetoric on reform. His goal of making long-term decisions that previous governments have shied away from is laudable, but short-term goals aimed at winning a second term will likely become his top priority as the next election approaches.

There is no shortage of ideas for reform. Today, think tank Demos unveiled a plan to deconcentrate public services to groups of local authorities, including shared budgets at regional level. He said a £41bn “reform dividend” from “liberated public services” would return them to their pre-pandemic productivity levels.

Jonathan Slater, former permanent secretary at the Department for Education and a member of the Demos working group which produced the report, said: “I spent decades at the top of Whitehall – believe me when I say the solutions are not won’t come from there. Instead, we must put local leaders in the driver’s seat of reform.

Starmer’s allies tell me he is a decentralist at heart. But will the Treasury “let go” of the purse strings? I rather doubt it.

The real test of Starmer’s credibility on reform will not be what he says tomorrow, but Rachel Reeves’ government spending review, due next June. Insider suspects that, faced with an inevitable choice, Starmer will “side with the targets” because they arise from his five missionsrather than reform.

Between now and June, ministers with tight budgets will question the balance between objectives and reforms. Usually these reviews amount to a tug of war between the Treasury and ministers presenting their departments’ pet projects, and it is usually the strength of the Treasury that wins. He has been the dominant force in Whitehall in recent times, with the other points of the power triangle – Downing Street and the Cabinet Office – weakened. Starmer’s decision to “not call it a relaunch” is partly designed to put Number 10 back in the driver’s seat.

Reeves’ review is so crucial to the government’s fortunes that the entire cabinet should agree on its priorities.

Ministers must choose reform; talk about it as a good game, but relying on managerial adjustments will not be enough. Labor must deliver the changes it promised and which an impatient electorate who have lost faith in politicians voted for.