Labour has junked Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 manifesto and is now "starting from scratch", Keir Starmer has said as he distanced himself from pledges on free tuition and raising income tax on the top 5% of earners.
The Labour leader said that his party was still developing a policy offer to put to voters at the next general election and, following the Covid pandemic, would have to "make choices about where we put our money".
Speaking at the New Statesman Politics Live event, in London, he refused to back previous promises to scrap university tuition fees and his predecessor's vow to hike income tax for some of the highest earners.
“What we’ve done with the last manifesto is put it to one side. We’re starting from scratch. The slate is wiped clean,” he said.
The news is likely to rile Labour's left-wingers, who threw their weight behind Mr Starmer in the 2020 leadership race as he had pledged not to "trash" Mr Corbyn's policy platform.
Mr Starmer, who underlined that Labour fell to its worst election defeat since 1935 in 2019, added: “What we do have to recognise is that, having come through the pandemic, we need to look at everything in the round, and make choices about where we want to put our money."
He suggested that he was open to reform of university fees, but refused to say a Labour government would fund free tuition, adding: “[The current arrangements] don’t really work for students, they don’t really work for the universities. So of course, we’re going to have to look at that.”
Mr Starmer is known to have been more left-wing as a young man, writing for the left-wing Socialist Alternative in the 1980s and founding Surrey Young Socialists.
He said his experience leading the Crown Prosecution Service transformed his outlook on politics, adding: “If you don’t change your views as you experience life, then you’re probably not going to get very far.
"People sort of drag out something that you said 40 years ago and say, ‘Well, you’ve changed your mind about that.’ Of course I have.
"I have changed my mind on loads of things – that’s because I’ve done loads of things.”
The Labour leader also said he believed the next election would not be held until 2024, despite major threats to Boris Johnson's leadership due to the Partygate scandal.
He said Labour was planning for two terms in government and he believed, following victory in the Red Wall seat of Wakefield last week, that the party was on the path to power.
He said: “I can tell you now the next election is going to be fought on the economy. The cost of living crisis is causing such hardship for so many people. We have to get the economy growing… All those are secondary questions to the question: how are you going to grow the economy.”
