Why Keir Starmer should adopt peace as an strategic economic mission

Growth alone is not a moral mission. For Keir Starmer's government, making peace - not GDP - the organising principle could align values, stability and prosperity

In his Labour Party conference speech in September, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer doubled down on “growth” as the central mission of his government. At the same time, he drew a sharp moral line between Labour and Reform UK, invoking British and democratic values to paint the populist party as beyond the pale. But the contrast between these two themes reveals a deeper problem that may well define Mr Starmer’s premiership: Growth, in and of itself, has no moral valence. 

After all, many Western economies have grown while becoming more unequal, more financialised, more carbon-intensive, and more fragile politically. Growth can drive innovation and prosperity, but it can also fuel environmental breakdown, social division, and geopolitical instability. It is not a mission objective, but a metric, and metrics divorced from purpose can be dangerous. 

That is why clearly stated missions matter. They are what sets the direction of travel, aligning economic activity around clear, collective goals. A mission took humanity to the moon, galvanising investment in aerospace, nutrition, electronics, and materials, which in turn brought us camera phones, foil blankets, baby formula, and software products that we now take for granted. If designed to address today’s climate crisis, a mission can galvanise action across agriculture, energy, transportation, digital industries, and all other relevant sectors. 

Yet Mr Starmer’s government, entangling itself in a never-ending debate about fiscal space and budgetary holes, seems to have put mission-oriented thinking on the back burner. One issue that Mr Starmer has rightly emphasised is global instability, voicing concerns about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the horrors that continue to unfold in Gaza. Yet these are foreign-policy talking points with no connection to his domestic economic agenda. That is a missed opportunity. What if Labour made peace a mission? 

Unlike growth, peace is not morally neutral. It implies value commitments: Diplomacy over aggression, solidarity over isolation, and democracy over authoritarianism. Consider what a peace mission would look like in practice. Historically, wars have driven extraordinary innovation, generating everything from the radar to the internet. A peace mission would feature the same level of ambition, but directed towards conflict prevention rather than conflict readiness. It would mobilise investments in infrastructure and programmes to address the root causes of instability: Food insecurity, water scarcity, and climate displacement. 

These are urgent needs. Our recent research finds that if something isn’t done to safeguard water supplies and cycles, over 55 per cent of food systems will be at risk. And such risks of course can increase geopolitical tensions and the risk of more wars. A mission to provide global food security, then, would reduce the likelihood of resource wars by ensuring adequate nutrition and agricultural resilience. It would require financing innovation for climate-resistant crop varieties, drought-resilient irrigation systems, and sustainable land-use practices that preserve soil quality and stabilise the hydrological cycle. Here, Brazil’s climate fund, now one of the world’s largest, has already shown how public finance can be directed towards sustainable agriculture and land restoration. 

Peace, taken seriously, would also tie together domestic and international policymaking. It would require confronting violence not only abroad but at home in the United Kingdom, which is experiencing rising knife crimes, gender-based violence, and the scapegoating of migrants and asylum seekers. It would mean addressing the conditions — poverty, social exclusion, inequality — that allow conflicts to fester. Social stability would be seen as a product of investment, not as something that can be achieved through punishment. 

A peace mission would also resonate with Mr Starmer’s own history as a human-rights lawyer who built his career on the belief that justice is a public good. 

Ironically, United States President Donald Trump recognises the power of this narrative better than Mr Starmer (even if he contradicts it in practice). Mr Trump has relentlessly pursued the Nobel Peace Prize, repeatedly claiming that he “deserves” it for ending wars. With the prize continuing to elude him, FIFA President Gianni Infantino obsequiously invented a new FIFA Peace Prize to bestow on Mr Trump, thus turning peace into political theatre. 

Mr Trump understands that peace makes for great optics, but it could be even more powerful as an organising principle for the economy. Critics may dismiss this idea as too abstract, too soft, too utopian. But there is nothing soft about preventing war, protecting communities, or rebuilding fractured societies. Peace is hard. It requires big investments, and it can be politically difficult, especially in an era when conflict is increasingly profitable. But that is precisely why peace should be made a mission. It is simply too important to leave to chance. 

As we look ahead to 2026, we should reflect on what the economy is actually for. Is the point simply to generate higher GDP figures, or is it to create the conditions for human flourishing? A new year invites us to imagine alternative futures. Our resolutions must go beyond static measures of progress to ask what kind of society we want. 

The authors are, respectively, professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London, and professor of innovation and public governance at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.  ©Project Syndicate, 2025