Keir Starmer has made a direct and personal appeal for Conservative voters to back him at the general election, using a largely policy-light speech to the Labour conference to present his party as fiscally responsible but able to plan for the long term.
The Labour leader, who delivered the address in Liverpool in his shirtsleeves after a protester covered his jacket in glitter as he began, promised what he called “an entirely new approach to politics”.
In a speech peppered with direct and often brutal attacks on the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak, Starmer contrasted the past 13 years of Tory rule with what he described as “the real Britain”.
He said: “If you are a Conservative voter who despairs of this, if you look in horror at the descent of your party into the murky waters of populism and conspiracy, with no argument for economic change; if you feel our children need a party that conserves, that fights for our union, our environment, the rule of law, family life, the careful bond between this generation and the next – then let me tell you, Britain already has one. And you can join it – it’s this Labour party.”
At almost the moment he began speaking, Starmer was interrupted by the intruder, a young man who threw glitter over the Labour leader and shouted: “True democracy is citizen-led.”
After the protester was taken away, Starmer removed his glitter-covered jacket, saying to loud applause: “If he thinks that bothers me he doesn’t know me. Protest or power – that’s why we changed our party conference, that’s why we changed our party.”
Starmer set out his vision of a Labour government undoing the damage from Conservative rule, while yet again stressing that voters should expect this to take time.
“I have to warn you: our way back from this will be hard,” he said. “But know this – what is broken can be repaired. What is ruined can be rebuilt. Wounds do heal. And ultimately, that project – their project – will crash against the spirit of working people in this country.
“People are looking to us because they want our wounds to heal, and we are the healers. People are looking to us because these challenges require a modern state, and we are the modernisers. People are looking to us because they want to build a new Britain, and we are the builders.”
Starmer warned that if Labour won the election, its task would be harder and longer than that faced by Tony Blair.
He said: “If you think our job in 1997 was to rebuild a crumbling public realm, that in 1964 it was to modernise an economy left behind by the pace of technology, in 1945 to build a new Britain out of the trauma of collective sacrifice, then in 2024 it has to be all three.”
In a significant and repeated refrain, Starmer stressed his relatively humble background and promised to fight back against politicians trying to quash aspiration, such as Conservative pushbacks against mass entry to university.
“My dad felt the disrespect of vocational schemes all his life,” Starmer said. “But the solution is not, and never will be, levelling-down the working-class aspiration to go to university.
“Many people here will have heard a a nagging voice inside, saying, ‘no, this isn’t for you – you don’t belong here, you can’t do that’. Working-class people certainly hear that voice, trust me.”
Starmer railed against what he called “one barrier so big, so imposing that it blocks out all light from the other side” – the inability to build enough homes to alleviate the housing crisis.
With ideas including a “next generation of Labour new towns”, and the potential to build on “clearly ridiculous” parts of the green belt, Starmer said more housing was a central part of delivering economic growth.
This would be based around close ties with business and a “competitive tax regime”, Starmer said, as well as protections for workers: “Not state control, not pure free markets, but a genuine partnership, sleeves rolled up, working for the national interest.”
In a lighthearted opening section, Starmer expressed his sympathies to Manchester after it hosted the Conservative conference: “I really do feel for any city that had to host that circus last week. What can you say about a prime minister who goes to Manchester to cancel Manchester’s train line?
“A self-declared champion of motorists who had to borrow a shopkeeper’s car for his photo op. A man who keeps a close watch on the cost of living crisis – from the vantage point of his helicopter. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m beginning to see why Liz Truss won.”
