Is Rachel Reeves’s plan to slash civil service part of a ‘Trump lite’ strategy by the Starmer government?

From cuts to public spending to radical overhauls of government departments, the parallels between Labour’s approach and the US president’s are impossible to ignore, writes Sean O’Grady. But is this a temporary shift – or the future of Labour?

A drive to reduce the size and reach of the administrative state, abolish independent agencies, virtually end overseas aid – and cut social security to boost defence spending – is all very Trumpian. But, based on recent evidence, it’s all very Starmerite, too.

Could it be that the prime minister and his chancellor have been glancing across the Atlantic and getting inspired by what they see Donald Trump and Elon Musk getting up to? And, against what must be their natural social democratic instincts, are they being influenced (consciously or unconsciously) by the zeitgeist blowing in from America?

Is Starmer’s administration now “Trump lite”? And does Rachel Reeves’s “line-by-line” review of public spending amount to a clandestine attempt to turn HM Treasury into a British Doge?

In many ways, and uncomfortable as it may be for progressive types, the answer to that is clearly “yes”. What drives Starmer and Reeves seems to be very similar to what is motivating Trump and Musk as well – a feeling that the country will go bust unless the size of the state, borrowing and taxation can be brought down as quickly as possible.

Hence the twin-track approach – attacking institutions themselves as well as imposing austerity on departmental and agency budgets.

It cannot be a coincidence that the cuts to UK overseas aid that prompted the resignation of the international development secretary, Anneliese Dodds, came only a couple of weeks after Musk cancelled USAID’s contracts and ordered the cherrypicker to take the signage off the agency’s Washington HQ.

In America, Trump proudly abolished the Department of Education. In the UK, it was Wes Streeting who couldn’t conceal a certain amount of grim satisfaction when he announced the end was nigh for NHS England. Who was it who spoke so contemptuously a few months ago – indeed, with such a Trumpian outlook – about “too many people in Whitehall who are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”? Why, that quiet revolutionary Keir Starmer, with a somewhat out-of-character snarl of disdain.

Now, it’s Reeves’s turn to cut the civil service by 15 per cent – 10,000 more redundancies in the public sector, to add to the thousands of job losses at NHS England. Reeves has sacked one regulator for a lack of revolutionary zeal in the search for economic growth; she has abolished the Payment Systems Regulator (not unlike the White House scrapping its consumer protection arm); and she has ordered every government department and agency to come up with a plan to boost the economy – or else.

She says she will wield an “iron fist” in the detailed comprehensive spending review due to be completed in the summer. This week’s spring statement will outline the full rigour of her demands – possibly involving areas, such as education, that have hitherto been ringfenced.

Liz Kendall’s reforms – cuts – to sickness and disability benefits will not be the last such exercise to emerge from Whitehall this year. Indeed, given the boldness of the decisions to expand Heathrow and relax the planning rules, net zero targets may also be subject to some amendments, even if the formal pledge remains.

By all accounts, Reeves and Kendall’s plans for growth and the welfare state have caused some consternation around the cabinet table when they’ve been discussed, with Starmer allowing a free flow of the arguments. But in the end, figures such as Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband have had to grin and bear it under the discipline of collective responsibility – and only Dodds has quit in protest at this drift towards Trumpism.

The parliamentary “rebellions” against what Starmer and Reeves have imposed – usually going way beyond what the manifesto and election campaign heralded – have been muted. For the time being, at least, Starmer has as tight a grip on his parliamentary party as Trump does on his nominal Republican colleagues in Congress.

How much further will this strange Trumpian transformation of Starmer go? One dreads to think. The most obvious next move, if this baleful trend is to accelerate, would have to be a drive to “secure the border”, just as Trump has done with Mexico (or claimed to). There are even rumours that Starmer, a dedicated human rights lawyer for much of his adult life, is looking for ways to soften the “right to family life” clause in the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act.

He would never withdraw from the convention, one hopes, but you get the impression that he and his close adviser, Morgan McSweeney, would like to find a way to avoid embarrassing tabloid headlines, albeit mythical, about criminals being allowed to stay in the UK because their child likes a certain kind of chicken nuggets, or the romance scam conman who can’t be deported because his wife and children use the NHS.

As with his frustrations on the environmental front about “bat tunnels” and “jumping spiders” stopping infrastructure investment, Starmer and his team seem to be developing an almost Trump-like taste for populism. Nowhere could this be implemented more dramatically than in the matter of irregular crossings in the English Channel.

Pushed along, in part, by a fear of the electoral damage Nigel Farage will inflict on the party, it seems Labour has no option but to pander, frankly, to the hard right (or the legitimate concerns of traditional Labour voters, according to your point of view).

Starmer and Trump could not be more different in temperament or background, yet the policy parallels are growing more compelling – and the evidence seems to be that the pair have developed an improbably warm personal relationship. Could the socialist son of a Surrey toolmaker possibly have anything in common with the billionaire son of a New York property developer? A former director of public prosecutions with a convicted felon? The woke believer in multiculturalism with the man who has extirpated DEI from the American government? It seems so.

Starmer’s background in human rights and as a “liberal” (as Trump labels him) doesn’t seem to bother the present White House, which is likely more impressed by the size of Labour’s win in the general election (albeit the result in the Commons was overly flattering) and Starmer’s deferential posture.

Maybe Starmer, an archetypal civil servant manque of a prime minister in the mould of a Ted Heath or Theresa May, also feels something in his loins when he witnesses the speed and audacity of what his counterpart in Washington gets up to. The prime minister has so far studiously avoided criticising Trump’s tariffs on UK exports, or his peace plans, such as they are, for Ukraine and the Middle East – and that’s the kind of loyalty Trump expects. Starmer is keeping him on side.

The oddest of odd couples may fall out in due course – Trump usually does with everyone – and the currently quiescent Labour Party may at some point cry “enough” as the grinding cuts in public spending and services proceed. But, for now, we are seeing Starmer transform into a sort of were-Trump – and it’s frightening.