KEIR Starmer has been heckled during the Sky News leaders’ event as he was accused of only talking about “the past and the present” instead of the future.
The Labour leader and Rishi Sunak were interviewed in front of a live audience by Beth Rigby on Wednesday evening in The Battle For Number 10.
A member of the audience interrupted Starmer, saying: “You’ve still not, after 15-20 minutes, gone on to the future and this growth process that you’re going to go to.”
Starmer responded: “Well thank you for raising that because what we’ve done is we’ve set out the big change that we want to make but also what the first steps will be that we can do on day one.
“So the day after the election, I want to start on our first steps stabilising the economy to make sure we never go through a cost-of-living crisis like this before (sic), set up Great British Energy so we can keep your bills down, I want to start on the 40,000 appointments each and every week that we need to get the waiting list down in our NHS.
“We will be doing that the morning after the election and that is what I look forward to most.”
It comes as the Labour leader confirmed scrapping the two-child benefit cap would not be included in the party’s manifesto, which is set to be released on Thursday.
‘Political robot’
Starmer said “we’re not looking at wealth taxes” in the Labour manifesto and replied “no it isn’t”, when asked if scrapping the two-child benefit cap would be included, adding the party would have a child poverty strategy.
Another audience member left Starmer briefly speechless when they accused him of being a “political robot”.
The audience member said he admired “how in touch with the public” the Labour leader appeared when he was director of public prosecutions.
The man added: “But over the last year I feel like you have formed into more of a politician than the person I would have voted for to run the country.
“You seem more like a political robot. How are you going to convince others like me to vote for you?”
Starmer answered by speaking about his work in the Crown Prosecution Service.
He added that he did not apologise for changing the Labour party and told the audience: “I think it probably is a result of coming into politics late, because I am not tribally political, I actually do believe there are good people who vote other than Labour who want their family, their community, and their country to go forward.”
“You don’t seem to answer the question,” the man replied.
