Keir Starmer today led Labour’s conference in singing God Save The King for the first time after a tribute to “greatest monarch” Elizabeth II.
The Labour leader opened the gathering by tribute to the late Queen, held a minute’s silence in her memory and sang the National Anthem, backed by the shadow cabinet.
He appeared to have a tear in his eye at the end of the one-verse rendition.
Some Labour figures' fears that objectors could disrupt the event appeared not to materialise, as a witness in the hall in Liverpool said there was “not a murmur” of dissent.
Jeremy Corbyn, who has lost the Labour whip in Parliament, had described the decision to sing the national anthem for the first time as “very odd”.
The former Labour leader told the BBC : “They've never done it before, there's never been any demand to do it.
“We don't as a country routinely go around singing the national anthem at every single event we go to.
“We don't sing in schools, we don't have the raising of the flag as they do in the USA and other places.
“We are not that sort of, what I would call, excessively nationalist.”
But his successor wanted to pay tribute to the Queen just days after her funeral, and draw a line under Tory claims that Labour is unpatriotic.
A source close to Keir Starmer said: “If you want proof the Labour Party has changed, that tribute to the Queen was it. What a moment.”
In a tribute to the late Queen, he said she was “this great country’s greatest monarch”.
He added: “She was the thread - a reminder that our generational battle against the evil of fascism and the emergence of a new Britain out of the rubble of the Second World War don’t only belong to the past, but are the inheritance of each and every one of us.
“An example that taught us that whatever challenges we face, the value of service endures.”
The national anthem was sung on a microphone by a lone female singer, saving the crowd from being heard over the general microphones in the conference hall.
