What Labour’s first 100 days in government would look like

UK voters are expected to return the Labour party to power for the first time in 14 years when they go to the polls on Thursday.

These are some of the key moments that would occur in the first 100 days of a Sir Keir Starmer government.

July 5: Election result

If it becomes clear on Thursday night that Labour has won a majority of seats in the House of Commons, events will move swiftly. 

Conservative MPs expect Rishi Sunak would resign as prime minister on Friday, beginning what is likely to be a fractious race to succeed him as party leader.

After Sunak tenders his resignation in an audience with King Charles, Starmer would visit Buckingham Palace and ask the king for his permission to form a government, a procedural requirement of all new prime ministers.

Starmer would then travel to Downing Street and give a speech to the nation before meeting the staff of Number 10 and starting to form his cabinet. 

July 9: International summit

Starmer would be expected to attend the three-day meeting of Nato members in Washington DC alongside leaders including US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Having stressed the importance of national security on the campaign trail, he would be likely to signal the UK’s intention to face outwards and work more closely with allies. 

First days and weeks

Within days Labour could enact several policy changes to emphasise its break with successive Tory administrations.

Starmer has said he would axe the Rwanda asylum scheme on “day one”.  Ed Miliband, now shadow energy secretary, has promised to reverse the de facto ban on onshore wind farms within weeks. 

John Healey, shadow defence secretary, will rapidly want to launch his year-long review of the UK’s military capabilities. Wes Streeting, shadow health secretary, will begin talks with the British Medical Association to end long-running strikes by junior doctors in England.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner, who would run the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, is expected to publish a revised draft of the national planning policy framework.

This would bring back top-down targets for housing delivery in every council area in England in a bid to ease the property crisis.

July 17: King’s Speech

The set-piece event will allow parliament to begin a new session and start its business.

Labour is expected to introduce legislation empowering the Office for Budget Responsibility, the fiscal watchdog, to independently publish forecasts of any big fiscal event involving major tax and spending changes.

The highly political bill would be a riposte to the ill-fated “mini” Budget of former prime minister Liz Truss, who prevented the OBR from delivering projections that would typically accompany a Budget.

The King’s Speech would also include “Labour’s plan to make work pay”. Overseen by Rayner, the employment reforms include a crackdown on zero-hours contracts and “fire and rehire”, new collective bargaining for the social care sector and extending equal pay protections to ethnic minority and disabled workers.

The party would need legislation to set up the centrepiece of its green energy plans — GB Energy, a new state-owned energy investor that will be based in Scotland and take stakes in renewables and nuclear projects. 

Labour is also expected to introduce a crime and policing bill to address antisocial behaviour and create a new offence of criminal exploitation of a child to tackle county lines drug-dealing, where young couriers are used to ferry illegal substances from urban centres to more rural areas.

Other potential announcements on July 17 include legislation to:

• Set up a new parliamentary Integrity and Ethics Commission, which would replace the existing Whitehall appointments watchdog

• Address the growing number of people being sectioned because of a mental health condition and improve care for people with learning disabilities

• Fulfil plans to gradually nationalise the railways

• Reform the planning system, for example by removing “hope value” enjoyed by land speculators

Labour has also indicated it will revive several pieces of “off the shelf” legislation that Sunak promised but failed to enact before parliament was dissolved.

These include the tobacco and vapes bill, which will ban anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes and introduce new curbs on the sale of vapes; the renters (reform) bill, which would ban “no-fault evictions”; and the football governance bill, which would create a new regulator for the sport in England.

July 18: EPC summit

After Washington DC, Starmer would have a second opportunity to set out his vision to allies as he chairs a meeting of the European Political Community at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the birthplace of Winston Churchill.

August 1: Summer recess

Starmer is expected to crunch the parliamentary recess, which typically runs from late July until early September, so that it only covers most of August.

Dissolution honours

Labour is expected to create 20 or 30 peers to try to rebalance the House of Lords away from its current Conservative dominance. At present, parliament’s upper house has 171 Labour members compared with 275 for the Tories.

In taking this step, Starmer is likely to assign ministerial posts to new peers.

September: Party conferences

The annual season of political party conferences will begin with the Liberal Democrats, who will gather in Brighton between September 14 and September 17.

Labour will meet in Liverpool between September 22 and September 25, with security significantly increased if the party is in power.

The Conservatives meet in Birmingham a week later, in what could be their first annual conference in opposition for 15 years.

October: Budget

Rachel Reeves would be expected to deliver her first Budget in mid-September or more likely after the party conferences in October. Around this time she would unveil her first comprehensive spending review — lasting one or three years — to set departmental budgets.

Measures that Labour has already set out in its manifesto include higher taxes on non-doms, extending and expanding the windfall tax on energy companies and imposing VAT on private school fees.

The party has also promised to increase the tax paid by private equity chiefs but it is expected to announce a consultation before pushing through the change. 

The bigger question is whether Reeves will choose to use her first Budget to increase wealth taxes, having refused to rule out a rise in levies such as capital gains tax and inheritance tax.

The alternative would be to accept an acute squeeze on public spending for most departments, pencilled in by Sunak’s government.