Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Andy Burnham MP, the MP for Makerfield, has now become Prime Minister, taking over mid-way through a rare Labour administration. It is, in his own words, the ‘last chance’ for this Labour government to change, to do something bold and show the country that the change they promised at the last election are real and will be felt in people’s lives. Andy will now be casting around for ‘big ideas’ to help reset this Labour administration, and his last set piece speech before becoming elected Leader of the Labour Party, he set some of this out. However, Andy and his team are still looking for policy proposals that bring the country together, are popular, and meet multiple threats and aims that this country needs. The five ‘national missions’ set out by Keir Starmer and his administration went some ways to meeting this need for ‘big ideas’ that delivered on multiple national agenda. As argued by Mariana Mazzucato, the architect of Labour’s mission-led governance, they ought to be pivoting back to the original five missions after two years of drift and letting the missions get subsumed by Treasury priorities.

Part of the reasons why mission-led government has been blown off-course is that it often fails to understand that it isn’t operating in a political vacuum. As we have seen in the case of mission to ‘make Britian a clean energy super-power’, these missions have been controversial and politically contested. The Starmer government seemed unwilling to back their missions and have the arguments with those opposed to them. In their best form – mission-led government can bring communities and interests together, but they will always set up fights with those opposed to the mission. And Keir Starmer’s government ended up generally avoiding those fights and not defending the missions for their detractors and incumbency special interests.

Andy should use these first weeks in office to think again about refining and refocusing these national mission. Yes, as Mazzucato argues they need to be focusing on delivery of the missions and adopting whole-of-government approaches to transforming the state. A similar critique was recently raised by the Convention on Biological Diversity’s mid-term report on the GBF – that ideas and intentions were good, but that whole-of-government transformations were lacking. And much like my own recent book on this subject, Governing the Nature Restoration State, Mazzucato identifies the governance levers that need to be pulled to bring about state transformation. But, critically, Labour’s existing five missions lack an emotive heart that speaks to people and brings political payback. National nature restoration as a mission meets this need. It is a story about reclaiming something precious that has been lost, realising transformative change, it is about Making Peace with Nature, and making people’s lives more connected and rewarding. National missions need to be rational as well as emotive. Cooperation and shared struggle in the national interest can be a powerful political force. There are five reasons why Andy Burnham ought to consider making ‘nature restoration’ one of our national missions: 1) it’s good for our national security, 2) it’s good for people’s health and wellbeing, 3) its good economics, 4) it makes us more climate resilient and 5) it good emotive politics.

First, the government has recently admitted to the deep risks that flow from the Holocene mass extinction. As biodiversity continues to nosedive, ecosystems could crash, and cascade into others, imperilling our food and material economy as well as myriad other ecosystem services and natural capital. As I argue in my book, all countries have evolved over time to be reliant of exploiting nature, often in hidden ways. In the Holocene all countries will have to reckon with how resilient their national natures are – and this is a critical problem for the UK as one of the most nature denuded countries of the global north.  A mission of national nature restoration would make us more secure and resilient in a world that is being rapidly transformed by ecosystem loss.

Second, vibrant and flourishing nature is an essential component of health and wellbeing. Weve been exploring this for years at the European Centre for Environmental and Human Health at the University of Exeter and have comprehensively evidenced the multiple co-benefits that being in nature bring to holistic human well-being. This is not a replacement for scanners, doctors and hospitals; and the NHS needs rebuilding after years of decline. But vibrant and flourishing nature is an environmental determinant factor in good population health and wellbeing, and the mission of nature restoration could act as a heuristic that encompasses restoring the NHS.

Third, as the physiocrats once understood, nature lies at the heart of our national economic commonwealth. Whilst there has been excellent progress in recent years around making nature restoration an investable asset class the wider political sensibility that vibrant and flourishing nature is foundational to our economic wellbeing as a nation is missing. Too often the language has become dry and detached from peoples’ everyday lives. Adopting this sixth mission would allow for government to craft a new economic narrative for the public about why nature restoration makes us all richer.

Fourth, as we have seen in the heatwave this week gone by, the climate crisis is here and now. The climate crisis and nature crises are inseparable. Vibrant and flourishing nature hedges against climate risk by making our cities and communities more liveable, more resilient to climate induced disasters and shocks and by storing carbon from the atmosphere nature restoration can help mitigate climate change. National nature restoration won’t solve the climate crisis alone, but there is an opportunity for it to support and complement the mission for the UK to become a clean technology powerhouse.

Fifth, most important of all for Andy Burnham, the British public overwhelming care about nature. And as I argue, political narratives of restoration are particularly salient across the political-ideological spectrum. A progressive mission of restoring a vibrant and flourishing nature to our green and pleasant land would be generally popular across the political spectrum. If crafted and communicated well, the mission of national nature restoration could act as a form of third-way politics.

My message for Andy Burnham, therefore, is that national nature restoration ought to be his sixth national governance mission. It would be good for our managing national risk and security, good for health and wellbeing, good economics and for meeting the climate crisis. Most of all it would, if crafted well, make good politics that brings the country together in a moment of shared endeavour and struggle. As both Martiana Mazzucato and I have argued in different places, it could bring about transformations in how the state itself governs and is structured. This mission could help bring the nation together at a time when the nation, and the Labour Party, need unity of purpose. This is, after all, as Andy has argued, their last chance to change.