Gordon Brown has said there is a more "sweeping" desire for change in Britain than in the run-up to Labour's 1997 election landslide.
The ex-Prime Minister claimed it was noticeable in "every part of the country" as the Tories under Rishi Sunak offered only "cosmetic change".
His remarks came as Keir Starmer used a major speech today to back plans to scrap the unelected and "indefensible" House of Lords.
He also blasted the "sticking plaster" approach to reform and said the country was being held back by a "broken model" that "hoards power in Westminster.
On Monday the Labour leader published a landmark report - led by Mr Brown - saying that Covid had exposed the country's "faulty wiring".
It warned that Brexit has not delivered the control the public were promised, adding: "Britain hasn't taken back control - Westminster and Whitehall have".
The Commission on the UK's Future made 40 recommendations, including replacing the House of Lords with an elected Assembly of Nations and Regions.
Mr Starmer said it would be his hope to usher in a new elected chamber within the first term of a Labour Government - but stopped short of a commitment.
He told The Mirror in Leeds the "sooner we can abolish" the positions of 91 hereditary peers in the upper chamber, the "better".
The Commission also called for a ban on MPs' second jobs, with some limited exceptions, and for 50,000 civil service jobs to be moved out of London.
In a bid to "clean up Westminster" the report proposed setting up an Integrity and Ethics Commission and putting an end to "Conservative sleaze".
It would have powers to decide whether ministers have breached rules and be a "wholly independent body of people who are not politicians".
Many of the details are yet to be fine tuned and Labour will consult on the proposals before publishing its manifesto for the 2024 election.
Speaking after the launch of the report, Mr Brown said "more so than in 1997, people want change".
"I was around obviously, in the many years from the 1980s to 1997 parliament and I saw the rising demand for change," he told PA News.
"The worry about the decline in public standards, which happened when we had all these sleaze allegations, the failure of the economy after ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism) and people's desire for change, but I think it's a more sweeping and more noticeable desire, and it's in every part of the country."
