Before and since taking power, the prime minister has set out lists of milestones, missions, targets and pledges – things he wants the country to achieve under his leadership.
We have broken down some that have been repeated most consistently and started tracking them.
They have been split into two groups – things that relate to specific policy areas, and things that relate to money. Every time the data is updated, our charts will update.
How we are measuring progress
Illegal migration: Labour’s promise – “smash” people smuggling gangs and reduce Channel crossing numbers
This is one of the easier ones to track as the Home Office publishes daily updates on the number of people arriving in the UK on small boats.
Historically, the numbers have tended to be highest in the summer and lower again at times when the weather is not so good.
We are showing a cumulative annual total so you can compare where we are in the current year against where we were at the same point in previous years.
Healthcare: Labour’s promise – no more than 8% of patients will wait longer than 18 weeks for elective treatment
This target only refers to England, because healthcare is a devolved power that the national governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are responsible for delivering in their countries.
NHS England publishes monthly data on waits for elective care, dating back almost 20 years.
There was a period in the 2010s when this target was met consistently. But following that, wait times grew gradually but steadily for several years, and then rapidly following the COVID pandemic.
Despite what looks like limited movement on the chart so far, the Health Foundation say the government are currently on track with delivering this ambitious target. They add that serious effort will need to be sustained to get it over the line.
Housebuilding: Labour’s promise – build 1.5 million homes by the time of the next election
This target also only applies to England. It’s equivalent to an average of 300,000 per year, although Labour have always said that delivery will not be linear and they expect to make up a shortfall in their last couple of years in power.
The official data for the number of new homes added – taking into account any that have been demolished or are no longer habitable, and any converted (for example from commercial to residential) – is only published once a year, usually in about November, referring to the previous financial year.
There is data published more regularly, however, on the number of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) granted. Because each new home needs to be issued an EPC, the number of EPCs granted and houses built usually match each other quite closely.
In our chart, we use EPCs as a representative measure to forecast how many homes have been built, which is replaced by official data when that becomes available.
According to that, about 200,000 houses were added during Labour’s first year in power. That means they will need to average 325,000 for the remaining four years to deliver on their target.
Clean power: Labour’s promise – at least 95% of energy from low carbon sources by 2030
We are measuring this pledge using data from the National Energy System Operator, an independent public body that plans and manages the energy network. It tells us what proportion of energy used in Great Britain comes from various sources, including low-carbon options like wind, solar and nuclear.
The government say that when it judges whether it has achieved its target, it will adjust for the weather, meaning the threshold may actually be slightly higher or lower than 95% depending on how sunny or windy it is at the time.
It has not confirmed exactly how it is going to do that, however, so we are just publishing the raw figures, consolidating data published every half-hour into a monthly average.
The Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises government on tackling climate change, say the target is possible but will be difficult to achieve, and there is “little room for error”.
Violent crime: Labour’s promise – halve serious violent crime, including knife crime and violence against women and girls (VAWG), within 10 years
This is the least well fleshed out of the policy targets. The government has said a few times that it intends to halve knife crime and VAWG within a decade, but there are a few different ways of measuring each of these and more than a year after coming to power, the government has still not confirmed which it is going to use.
We do know that the pledge refers only to England and Wales, because the justice system in Scotland and Northern Ireland is devolved.
At the moment, we are using “police recorded crime” data published by the Home Office. We add together all crimes categorised as “violence against the person”, ranging from common assault to murder, plus sexual offences and robbery.
The Crime Survey of England and Wales is another source that measures people’s experience of crime, published by the ONS.
The ONS say that there is no single definition of what constitutes “violent crime”, though. They are working with the Home Office to come up with one, so we may switch to using that measure when it has worked it out.
Disposable income: Labour’s promise – raise living standards in every part of the United Kingdom
This is the least ambitious of Labour’s targets. Other than the recent Conservative government of 2019-2024, which had to adapt to a global pandemic and Britain’s exit from the EU, every parliament in recorded British history has overseen an improvement in living standards.
We measure this by looking at real household disposable income per person – how much each of us has to spend each month after paying taxes.
The figures published by the ONS are adjusted for inflation and seasonal fluctuations. Our methodology is similar to what thinktanks like the Institute for Fiscal Studies or the Resolution Foundation use, taking the figure closest in date to each election and seeing how things change from there.
Given that the target itself is unambitious, we wanted to be able to benchmark the improvements under this government with others at the same point in their parliamentary terms, so that’s what our chart does.
Personal tax: Labour’s promise – we will not increase taxes on working people
More specifically, the government has said it will not raise the current rates of national insurance, income tax or VAT, despite economists warning that taxes will have to rise to bring down government borrowing.
Even if these personal tax rates do stay the same, they do not tell the whole story by themselves.
The thresholds at which we start paying tax, and then start paying higher-rate tax, are set to be frozen until April 2028. They have already been frozen since April 2021.
That means that, as inflation leads to wage increases, we end up paying more tax on a higher proportion of our earnings. This process is known as fiscal drag.
Read more: What key budget terms mean
What that all means is that the effective tax rate – the percentage of your wages that are paid in tax – is set to rise over the next few years, almost by stealth. That’s what we are tracking.
We are looking at what average wages in the UK are each month, and working out how much someone earning that amount would need to pay in income tax and national insurance.
Keep inflation low: Labour’s promise – bring down food prices and the cost of energy and continue to target stable inflation of 2%
This one is a bit more straightforward again. The ONS publishes monthly figures on inflation, which explain how prices have risen over the previous 12 months across a huge range of goods and services that are relevant to our lives.
These figures are the best way of quantifying the cost of living crisis. They soared to their highest rates in more than 40 years in October 2022, before falling again – close to the 2% Bank of England target – under the final months of the previous government.
Our tracker allows you to see exactly what’s happened under Starmer’s premiership, in detail, and also includes the historical rates for context.
Controlling the tax burden: Labour’s promise – we will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible
We have already spoken about tax on earnings. But that does not take into account things like VAT and stamp duty, as well as things like corporation tax, which we do not pay directly.
The best measure for this is the tax burden, which measures all the revenue received by the government in a given year and benchmarks it against GDP – the total value of all goods and services produced in the UK.
This means the tax burden is a measure of how much of the country’s economic output is being taken in tax, which makes it the best way to make international and historical comparisons.
Labour’s 2024 manifesto accused the Conservatives of raising the tax burden to a 70-year high. We use figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility to see whether Labour improve on that or takes it higher still.
Economic growth: Labour’s promise – secure the highest sustained growth in the G7
The G7 is a group of seven countries – the UK, the US, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada (as well as the EU) – that co-ordinate on global economic policy and international challenges. Economic growth refers to the change in GDP from one period to the next.
Labour have claimed they have already achieved this target, but that’s based only on the first six months of this year. We are looking at figures over a rolling one-year period, so each time you come back to this page, it will have the latest annual numbers.
Other than a period during the COVID recovery, the last time the UK led on this metric for a sustained period was in 2014. The US and Canada have exchanged the lead since 2023.
Our figures come from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of mostly advanced economies that collects and standardises international data.
Starmer economy tracker and Starmer policy tracker tools built by Przemyslaw Pluta, Sky News lead data engineer.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open-source information. Through multimedia storytelling, we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
