Keir Starmer has made a direct appeal for “despairing” Conservative voters to back Labour at the next election, telling them he would repair a Britain broken by 13 years of Tory governments.
In what could be the Labour leader’s final conference speech before the next election, he set out the case for national renewal and why his party should be given the chance to reverse the decline.
Starmer, who delivered the address in Liverpool in rolled-up shirt-sleeves after a protester leapt on to the stage at the start of his speech and covered his jacket in glitter, declared that the “fire of change still burns in Britain”.
With his party requiring a 12% swing to win a majority of just one, Starmer urged “despairing” Tory voters who were “looking in horror” at the descent of their party into the “murky waters” of populism and conspiracy, to consider backing Labour.
“If you feel our country needs 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.”
He told his own supporters that Rishi Sunak would fight a dirty election, with the Tories “prepared to scorch the earth” just to attack Labour. “Wherever you think the line is, they’ve already got plans to cross it.”
The speech came on the penultimate day of a largely uneventful conference in Liverpool, which has been the largest ever, with 18,000 attendees including hundreds of businesspeople and an upbeat atmosphere as the party attempted to present itself as a government in waiting.
Starmer’s speech was light on policy, with a pledge to “bulldoze” his way through planning restrictions to build 1.5m new homes in his first term, but attempted to answer the question the party had set itself at the beginning of its conference: “If not them, why us?”
He drew on his working-class credentials as he said that working people should feel they belong and could contribute in Britain. “Imagine if a whole country said we back your potential. Look what we could build,” he said.
“We should never forget that politics should tread lightly on peoples’ lives. That our job is to shoulder the burden for working people, carry the load, not add to it,” he added, intimating that Labour would not put up taxes when it faced cost of living pressures.
While Starmer set out his vision of a Labour government undoing the damage from Conservative rule, he said this would 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 said that if Labour won the election, expected next year, its task would be harder and longer than that faced by Tony Blair, with the party potentially taking over against a grim economic backdrop and public faith in politics at an all-time low.
“Changing a country is not like ticking a box. It’s not the click of a mouse. Long-term solutions are not ‘oven-ready’,” he said, a reference to Boris Johnson’s claim to have had an “oven-ready Brexit deal”, and a rejection of Sunak’s claim to be the change candidate.
“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.”
Labour activists, who observed a minute’s silence for Israel on Monday, applauded when he condemned the murder of Israelis “in cold blood by the terrorists of Hamas”. He added that Labour believed in a two-state solution “but this action by Hamas does nothing for Palestinians”.
Starmer drew a dividing line of his own with the Tories over the environment after the prime minister watered down the government’s own net zero commitments. “When Rishi Sunak says row back on our climate mission, I say speed ahead,” he said.
His promise to build 1.5m new homes by the end of Labour’s first term would involve new development corporations with powers to cut through red tape and the creation of new towns across England.
He insisted the plans would not mean “tearing up the green belt” but said that where there were “clearly ridiculous” sites such as disused car parks and wasteland, which were more of a “grey belt”, then development should be permitted.
Starmer said the founding principles of the NHS being free at the point of need, which he described as “the crowd-funded solution for all of us”, were on the line at the next election and promised to invest to cut waiting lists that currently top 7.5 million people.
Nevertheless, he added that Labour would transform the NHS as “there is no other option” than reform. “If all we do is place the NHS on a pedestal then I’m afraid it will remain on life support,” he said.
In a lighthearted opening section, Starmer expressed his sympathies to Manchester after it hosted the Conservative conference last week: “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.”
