What to make of another retreat by Keir Starmer from a policy that made him Labour leader?

Workplace law is the latest area of policy to see changes, writes John Rentoul

Labour leader Keir Starmer with deputy leader Angela Rayner (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

The Labour Party is said to have “watered down” its policy on employment rights. Instead of granting full rights to every worker on their first day in a new job, employers will be allowed to put new employees on probation.

It is unclear how different this will be from the current law, which denies workers full rights until they have been in a job for two years.

Keir Starmer also seems to have retreated from his policy from just two years ago to create a single status of “worker” in order to prevent companies from using bogus self-employed status to cut tax bills and avoid giving workers employee rights. The party now promises to consult – in government – on “a simpler framework”.

What is the precise wording of Labour’s new policy?

We don’t know. Documents were agreed at the party’s National Policy Forum in Nottingham four weeks ago, but they have not yet been published. It was reported at the time that Starmer had got all the changes he wanted, and that Unite was unhappy, with the union’s delegates walking out of the final dinner.

The Financial Times quotes some snippets from the new policy. One says that the promise of “basic individual rights from day one”, including sick pay, parental leave and protection against unfair dismissal, will “not prevent ... probationary periods with fair and transparent rules and processes”.

And the promise of a consultation on how to distinguish between workers and the genuinely self-employed will aim to “properly capture the breadth of employment relationships in the UK” and to ensure that workers can still “benefit from flexible working where they choose to do so”.

What did Starmer promise when he was elected leader?

The seventh of his 10 pledges was: “Strengthen workers’ rights and trade unions.” It read: “Work shoulder to shoulder with trade unions to stand up for working people, tackle insecure work and low pay. Repeal the Trade Union Act. Oppose Tory attacks on the right to take industrial action and the weakening of workplace rights.”

He now seems to be working shoulder to shoulder with employers, as well, to design laws that avoid loading them with additional costs. He and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, boast about the number of chief executives they have met, and Starmer tells groups of corporate bosses that he wants to see “business’s fingerprints all over Labour policy”.

But didn’t Starmer mention ‘class’ this week?

The Labour leader wrote in an article for The Scotsman on Tuesday that “you cannot seriously take on inequality, or poverty ... without talking about class”. He even said: “My political project is to return Labour to the service of working people and working-class communities.”

This appears to be triangulation: on the one hand, he is “clarifying” employment policy in consultation with business, and sharing a stage with Tony Blair; on the other, he is using some very un-Blairite language about class to try to appeal to the party’s trade union roots. It makes no sense to me, but I cannot argue with a 20-point lead in the opinion polls.

What does Angela Rayner say about it?

The party’s deputy leader and shadow secretary of state for the future of work did not sound at all sure, when she was interviewed by the BBC this week, that she would be responsible for employment rights policy if Labour were elected. “The important thing is that I will be the deputy prime minister,” she said.

However, on Friday, she tweeted in response to the reports, saying: “I’m proud that we developed our comprehensive New Deal together with Labour’s affiliated unions. Far from watering it down, we will now set out in detail how we will implement it and tackle the Tories’ scaremongering.”

This presumably means that matters will be made clearer at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool in October.