Frances Ryan At last, Starmer is beginning to shine – and it wasn’t just the glitter
Ahead of Keir Starmer’s speech, his team were said to be wary of him appearing triumphalist, but at the same time knew that the cautious leader needed to make an impact.
With the glitter from a protester decorating his white shirt, a bullish Starmer finally managed to shine: a plan to tackle the NHS backlog; Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean energy company smartly based in Scotland; 1.5m new homes; the scrapping of zero-hours contracts, the ending of fire and rehire and a real living wage.
And yet this speech was much less about listing policy and more about inspiring emotion. “People are looking to us because they want our wounds to heal and we are the healers,” he said. The line was a little Gwyneth Paltrow but hit the national mood: after years of Tory cuts and division, many people in this country feel broken and beaten.
Few things stifle progress more than hopelessness and Starmer’s language created some much-needed optimism (albeit loaded with clunky mixed metaphors). Yes, the challenges ahead are vast but Britain can have “a decade of national renewal,” he assured us.
There were moments that seemed designed to appease the rightwing press. He spoke of “shoulder[ing] the burden for working people” but offered no support for the millions of disabled and sick people suffering in the Tories’ cruel and meagre benefits system. He dedicated time to cracking down on antisocial behaviour but not to fixing social care.
Still, this was a speech that understood the scale of the struggle out there. The line describing people “walking slower past their food bank” nowadays was particularly poignant.
The successes of the Blair government that Starmer listed – from Sure Start to the minimum wage – were a stark reminder of what Labour can do in power. Starmer has kicked off the fight-back. Now the hard work really begins.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
Zoe Williams The sentiment was obvious, the policy thin on the ground. And yet there was hope in the air
“Take the jacket off,” the audience was murmuring, insistently. Keir Starmer, before he’d said his first word, had been hug-assaulted by a protester whose aims were unclear, and was now covered in glitter. Some wag was humming Like a Rhinestone Cowboy. There was a beat. “Take the jacket off,” people said, still quietly, but whether he heard or not, he did. He rolled up his sleeves. “Take your tie off,” one person said, and then, more hopefully, “now your shirt”. Against all known odds, the intervention had helped: Starmer finally looked relaxed. “If he thinks that bothers me, he doesn’t know me,” he said, but who does?
Starmer famously loves all things football – metaphor, homily – so must have just made his peace with the fact that a lot of this was an open goal. We weren’t listening for why the Conservatives were bad at government, but we understood that we needed to hear it, and – fair play – when you lay it all out, it doesn’t sound good. “Do not doubt that the fire of change burns inside Britain,” he said. “The question is whether it burns in Labour.” It was quite a strange framing; you guys know you want change. Are we in government going to let you have it? But it was predicated on the inevitability of victory, which took a chutzpah that even 18 months ago would have been unimaginable.
There was plenty I’d file under “if you hate it, it’s working” – schmaltzy stuff about growing up in a pebble-dashed house that he is manifestly uncomfortable rolling out. You could chin-scratch about policy – how much difference will VAT on private schools make really; is Great British Energy more than a crowd-pleaser for the Scottish contingent? – and the sentiment was often obvious. Obviously we all need the ability to look forward, to move forward. Obviously a Labour leader will end by promising to fight for the working man. But it’s been so long, so very long, since we heard anyone plausibly say that things don’t have to be this bad.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
Sahil Dutta The right notes were hit on the economy, but the structural change we need was missing
Keir Starmer was right to challenge the “hoarding” of economic potential that holds the UK back. Intense concentrations of wealth makes it very difficult to achieve nationwide economic gains. He was also right to confront the dominance of Westminster. Our political system is among the most centralised in the industrialised world. In the decade after the financial crisis, central government funding for local authorities fell by nearly 50%, a fatal hit to living standards.
Yet tackling the hoarding of political and economic power will need more than the reforms to planning laws and public sector provision that he mentioned today. With high interest rates and a stagnating world economy, growth and economic security won’t simply follow from a steady political environment. There needs to be an active reallocation of the country’s existing resources. Investors collected £148bn in dividends and buybacks from UK businesses last year, money that could have been used to lift the country’s chronically low levels of investment instead. New rules are needed to change this by overhauling the way companies are governed. Extreme private wealth is currently stowed away in financial assets, but this needs to be released for public investment through increases in capital gains taxes. By developing new green technology and jobs, the capital and labour currently used for the production of ecologically harmful forms of energy, technology and food would be redeployed. These structural shifts are the precondition of national economic renewal, not the outcome.
While Starmer struck the right emotional notes about the future of the UK economy today, he avoided saying anything about the tough choices needed to get there.
Sahil Dutta is a lecturer in political economy
Nels Abbey What was missing? Substance – but also, thank heavens, culture war point-scoring
“Inspiring”, “exciting”, “enthusing”, “enlightening”, “rip-roaring” – all words no one would ever use to describe Keir Starmer. And in this regard, his speech remained fairly true to form. Using football as an analogy, as a leader Starmer appears closer to the brutalism of Sam Allardyce than the flair and victories of Alex Ferguson or Pep Guardiola: you don’t get the impression that he is going to lead the nation to fantastic success.
The speech was full of battle rap-worthy punchlines: “the comfort of the easy answer,” “get our NHS back on its feet,” “trickle-down nonsense: where wealth trickles up and jobs trickle out,” “barriers of dogma will not block our path,” “sticking-plaster politics,” “what is broken can be repaired, what is ruined can be rebuilt, wounds do heal”. The punchlines were heavy on principle indicating substance, often absent on crucial detail and, sadly, usually delivered with little punch – rendering them less effective and memorable than they should have been.
The part of the speech I connected with most was when he spoke of the psychological barriers to progress that working-class people often face. Starmer described this concept as the “nagging voice inside” telling working-class people they do not belong (you could call this “stay-in-your-place-ism”). He was on very solid ground here, for most working-class people know that voice far too well. However, while the psychological barriers are real, so are the societal barriers. And on how he would attack such barriers Starmer offered generous platitude but no detail, no substance.
Thankfully there was no blathering on about wokeness, no slavery apologia, no immigrant-bashing, no “I’m dreaming of sending people to Rwanda” and no response to such ridiculousness that has captured the Conservative party. Even while littered with glitter, Starm the Builder, Keir the Healer gave the nation what it so desperately needs right now: a leader who appears sincere (despite a track record of double-speak), as well as serious and one who, above all, conveys competence. Cometh the moment, cometh the decline-dodging manager? Hope may well be our only strategy at this point.
Nels Abbey is a writer, broadcaster and former banker
Fatima Ibrahim Seeing the climate crisis purely as an economic ‘opportunity’ is dangerous
“Is Labour being bold enough?” was the big question of conference, put to Labour politicians in countless media interviews. The answer is unfortunately still no. One of the only times Starmer mentioned the climate crisis was to describe it as an “opportunity”, framing it as part of a drive for economic growth. But with an existential crisis such as this, describing the problem in this way risks climate commitments being watered down if they are seen to infringe on this narrow justification.
This speech gave us an insight into how the climate crisis fits into the priorities of the party, and goes some way to explaining why Labour currently won’t promise to revoke the Rosebank oilfield and is constraining its ambitious pledge to spend £28bn on the green economy with conservative fiscal rules. That’s why we are calling on Labour to adopt a green new deal, a 10-year plan that would tackle climate change and the cost of living crisis at the same time.
There have been positive pledges, including a vow to reinstate the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars, and Ed Miliband’s energy independence bill. But ideas such as a green jobs guarantee and a national nature service have been ignored so far and wealth taxes are still ruled out.
People’s lives can be made better by tackling the climate crisis, but creating such strict and arbitrary restrictions on taxation and spending will inevitably lead to decisions that serve neither communities nor the fight against the climate crisis.
There’s still time for Labour to set out a bold vision that would guarantee its victory at the next election. It needs to see climate catastrophe and the cost of living crisis as the era-defining challenges they really are and act accordingly. If it fails, it puts that victory, and our futures, at risk.
Fatima Ibrahim is the co-founder and co-director of Green New Deal Rising
Tom Belger Even the hard-to-please party faithful were impressed
“Country first, party second.” Those four words encapsulate why Starmer’s speech could easily have fallen flat with the party faithful. LabourList readers regularly email in their grumbles about favoured policies being sidelined by Starmer.
But this was, as one frontbencher put it to me, a “barnstorming” speech. It offered more of the “vision” many members want, as well as smoothly weaving together many of Starmer’s key themes, from housebuilding and growth to workers’ rights and smashing the “class ceiling”.
“We were more on our feet than in our seats it felt like,” said another frontbencher.
It went down well with several members I spoke to, too. Starmer sounded more natural and energetic than usual, with an astute focus on day-to-day life.
Starmer’s speech even earned grudging admiration from some of his usual critics, with one veteran campaigner praising its “strong moral core” – even if it lacked detail on where the money will come from.
Former Ed Miliband adviser Tom Baldwin noted at a LabourList panel today the challenge of addressing difficult news in speeches, such as events in Israel now: mention it first and dampen spirits; mention it last and risk it looking like an after-thought. Starmer managed to smartly weave in a condemnation of Hamas early on, between a chunk on tackling antisemitism and a broader theme of an “age of insecurity”. One councillor noted such comments would have been “inconceivable” under Corbyn.
Sections of the party yearn for more radical policies, with one union leader warning Labour must not be for “corporate interests” and delegates backing public ownership in energy.
Yet Starmer feels powerful enough to ignore even successful motions, such as electoral reform last year.
With poll leads still high, Rutherglen rallying spirits and Rishi Sunak lurching to the right, many members have enough of a spring in their step and fire in their belly to put their doubts on ice.
Tom Belger is editor of LabourList
