The move of the Mission Delivery Unit from the Cabinet Office to No.10 little more than a year after its creation is a revealing moment not just about our fractious political climate but also about how the Starmer government conceives of strategy and delivery and about the role of the centre in stewarding reform.
The rise and fall of missions
The “five missions” once defined Labour’s vision for government. They were designed to offer long-term direction and provide a frame for policymaking. The Mission Delivery Unit, led by Clara Swinson, was meant to ensure that those cross-cutting priorities translated into practical delivery.
But political winds change. Missions gave way to the “Plan for Change” and six milestones, which in turn have been streamlined into three priorities: making people better off, improving the NHS, and securing borders and communities. Delivery is now being pulled from the Cabinet Office into No.10 itself under Darren Jones in a newly created ‘chief secretary to the prime minister’ role – a chief of staff in all but name.
It is tempting to read this simply as another reactive reset by a government beset by political troubles; but there are deeper lessons.
Delivery from the centre: The enduring challenge
For decades, the UK state has arguably struggled to connect purpose to delivery. Strategy, budgets and operational capacity and capability have too often been treated as separate challenges that exist within deep silos. The result is familiar:
- Ambitions without resources become aspirations
- Budgets without delivery capacity become waste
- Delivery oversight without clarity of purpose becomes drift.
All of these issues risk deepening the disconnection between the state and the citizen. The risk now is not that priorities have changed, but that they once again fragment: more slogans, more resets but no sustained alignment.
The prize of integration
The question remains whether a new unit in No.10 offers a chance to do things differently. Darren Jones has demonstrated the potential for using real-time data to map choices and trade-offs; he is regarded as a strong political performer. Could this be the moment the centre can at last provide a single view of how priorities, pounds and people connect?
That requires three things:
- Strategic integration – ensuring every commitment is grounded in strategic, fiscal and operational reality
- Clarity of accountability – so that departments know who speaks with the PM’s authority and decisions flow through a coherent chain
- Sustained capability – investing in the leadership, skills and institutional memory within departments, not just the centre, to carry projects through the messy middle, not just launch.
Other countries have shown it can be done. Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund has demonstrated how to align strategy, fiscal impact and delivery discipline. Canada’s Quality of Life Framework integrates outcomes into budgeting and governance. The UK can learn from these examples but only if the centre builds a machinery capable of sustaining coherence, alignment and progress over time.
What this means for ministers and civil servants
For ministers, this shift means discipline. Three priorities are not a free pass to launch new initiatives but a demand to focus relentlessly on whether existing programmes are aligned with those priorities and adequately resourced to deliver. It means trading off ambition for feasibility and sequencing reform so the system is not overloaded.
For civil servants, it means continuous adaptation. The centre will want clearer evidence of delivery capacity and real-time feedback on progress. Departments will need to open their systems to that scrutiny, integrate data in new ways and build the capability to adjust quickly when the centre identifies bottlenecks or risks.
Above all, it means that both ministers and civil servants must embrace delivery as a shared enterprise. The hallmark of success will be whether strategy, pounds and people are finally aligned and whether government can move from episodic reform to sustained transformation.
That is what it will take to build a truly strategic state.
Patrick Diamond is professor of public policy at Queen Mary University of London and a former head of policy planning in No.10. Vijay K. Luthra is a public service transformation specialist and former civil servant, local government councillor, school governor and NHS NED