Starmer runs the gauntlet of Corbynite fury in first in-person conference speech

Keir Starmer was repeatedly heckled by ‘petulant, small and awful’ Corbynites today as he warned Labour they must ‘get serious’ by ditching hard-Left policies to win power – and spoke movingly about the experience of caring for his late mother.

In his first in-person conference speech following the pandemic, Sir Keir faced chants of ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn‘ and shouts about his Brexit policy being to blame for the crushing election defeat in 2019.

In one grim piece of trolling, there were jibes screamed out as Sir Keir was talking about his late mother, an NHS nurse who suffered from a crippling rare form of arthritis. 

Sir Keir merely shook his head and carried on as he told how the Covid crisis had brought back memories of her illness.   

He shrugged off other brickbats, saying he got the same treatment from Tories at PMQs every week. ‘It doesn’t bother me then, it won’t bother me now.’

As he was hit with more catcalls of ‘shame’, he shot back: ‘Chanting slogans or changing lives!’  

The speech lasted a marathon 88 minutes as Sir Keir battled to make progress through the interruptions. 

Deploying his working-class roots and the ‘principles’ of hard work and fairness he learned from his toolmaker father, the leader insisted the way to get the party ‘back in business’ is to focus on pragmatic solutions for Britain’s problems.

Sir Keir warned social justice will never be achieved without a ‘strong economy’, promising not to repeat Corbyn’s mistake of putting uncosted splurges that lacked ‘credibility’.

While some delegates held up red cards and placards saying ‘no purge’ to show their disapproval of internal rule changes, others yelled at them to be quiet and let the leader speak. There were also strong rounds of applause at key sections as the hall showed its disgust at the disruptors. 

Deputy leader Angela Rayner was among those condemning the protesters afterwards – even though she clashed with Sir Keir over her ‘Tory scum’ comments this week.   

Ms Rayner told the BBC: ‘That wasn’t great, it was awful, but the audience, the vast majority of the audience, was very clear that they wanted to hear Keir’s message.’ 

Sir Keir has confirmed that totemic policies such as re-nationalisation of energy and water are being watered down.  

He defiantly channelled Tony Blair in one passage, saying that education was so important he was tempted to say it three times – a reference to the New Labour premier’s famous ‘education, education, education’ slogan. 

Sir Keir also unveiled plans to recruit thousands more teachers and boost mental health services, as well as setting a ‘national mission’ to make every home in the country warm, well-insulated and cheaper to heat within a decade.

The party said spending £6billion a year upgrading 19million homes would cut carbon emissions, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and save families over £400 a year on energy bills. 

The Tories said the conference underlined the deep divisions within Labour, but the CBI praised Sir Keir for ‘taking an important step forward by outlining an agenda where businesses can find common ground’. 

In a stark message to the Left, he said: ‘To those Labour voters who said their grandparents would turn in their graves, that they couldn’t trust us with high office, to those who reluctantly chose the Tories because they didn’t believe our promises were credible.

‘To the voters who thought we were unpatriotic or irresponsible or that we looked down on them, I say these simple but powerful words. We will never under my leadership go into an election with a manifesto that is not a serious plan for government.

‘It will not take another election defeat for the Labour party to become an alternative government in which you can trust. That’s why it has been so important to get our own house in order this week and we have done that.’

Anger is running high among hard-Left activists following days of squabbling over internal rule changes, the minimum wage, Israel and the military alliance with the US. 

Taking to the podium to Fat Boy Slim’s Right Here, Right Now after a video playing up his working-class background and stellar legal career, Sir Keir kicked off by joking that the start of conference had been ‘nerve-wracking’ – but only because his beloved Arsenal were playing Tottenham.

He quickly swiped at the government over the fuel crisis, saying: ‘Level up? You cannot even fuel up.’  

And he launched a series of excoriating attacks on Mr Johnson, describing the PM as a ‘tool’, a ‘trivial man’, and a ‘trickster’. 

In one of his edgiest gags, Sir Keir said: ‘My dad was a tool maker, although in a way, so was Boris Johnson’s.’ 

Shadow cabinet ministers rallied round the leader after the speech. Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said the heckling was ‘wrong’.

‘I think what you saw in the hall was a party that has changed,’ she told the BBC.

‘There are those who say we can stay the same, we can carry on with these pledges that we can’t keep, we can carry on standing on the sidelines waving placards and being a party of protest, and I say to them as Keir faced them down in the hall: you are wrong.’ 

Labour MP Angela Eagle said: ‘I thought that it was petulant and small and very disappointing.

‘I think that the party needs to work together. There is only a small number of people now that feel they have to behave like that and I am sorry that that happened. I think it was disrespectful.’

The speech had been billed as one of the most personal Sir Keir had delivered, and he described how he learned the importance of ‘good work and fair growth’ from his parents ’round the kitchen table’.

‘I learnt it at home, from my dad. How pride derives from work. How work is the bedrock of a good economy. And how a good economy is an essential partner of a good society,’ he said.

‘That’s why I am so proud to lead a party whose name is Labour. Don’t forget it. Labour. The party of working people.’

Ignoring more shouts from the audience, he went on: ‘My mum worked incredibly hard too. She was a nurse in the NHS and a very proud nurse too.

‘I got from my mum an ethic of service. But my mum was also, unfortunately, a long-term patient of the NHS.

‘When she was young, she was diagnosed with Still’s disease. It’s a rare form of inflammatory arthritis which severely restricts mobility. This disease, along with the drugs she had to take to control it, took a heavy toll.

‘The NHS that had been her livelihood became her lifeline. There were times, many times, when mum was so ill that she had to go into hospital.

‘I remember going into the intensive care unit one day, as I often did. Mum’s bed was a riot of tubes and temperature devices. 

‘I could sense the urgency in the conversation of the four nurses on my mum’s bed. I knew without being told that they were keeping her alive… 

‘When that long day was over, I thanked them for what they had done. And they said to me ‘we are just doing our job’. And they were.

‘They were doing their job for my mum that night, someone else’s mum the night before, someone else’s mum the night after.

‘But that’s not just a job. It’s a calling.’

At that point there was a loud bout of heckling, although the exact nature of the shout was unclear. 

Shaking his head sadly, Sir Keir continued: ‘So, when I think of the extraordinary dedication of doctors and nurses, working to keep people alive as the Covid virus took hold, I know what that looks like.’ 

The leader said said the country faces a ‘big moment’ in its history, adding: ‘I see a Government lost in the woods with two paths beckoning. One path leads back where we came from.

‘None of the lessons of Covid are learned. The flaws that were brutally exposed by the pandemic all worsen. Childhood poverty increases. The crisis in social care gets worse. The housing market is still broken. Slow and steady decline.

‘But there is another path down which we address the chronic problems revealed by Covid, with the kindness and the togetherness that got us through.

‘That path leads to a future in which a smart government enlists the brilliance of scientific invention to create a prosperous economy and a contribution society in which everyone has their role to play.

‘It will be a future in which we make an opportunity out of tackling the climate crisis and in which Britain is once again a confident actor in the world.

‘I believe in this country and I believe we will go forward.’ 

Turning to his main theme about the need to move on from the disastrous Corbyn era, he told the audience: ‘Too often in the history of this party our dream of the good society falls foul of the belief that we will not run a strong economy.

‘But you don’t get one without the other. And under my leadership we are committed to both. I can promise you that under my leadership Labour will be back in business.’   

At one point when he was interrupted again, with jibes including ‘shame’ and calls for a £15 minimum wage, Sir Keir replied: ‘You can chant all day,’ before being applauded by the audience.

Sir Keir desperately entreated his party to ‘get serious’, saying they had ‘lost badly’ to the Tories.   

‘I can see the ways in which we can remake this nation and that’s what we get to do when we win,’ he said.

‘Yet, in a way the more we expose the inadequacy of this government the more it presses the question back on us. If they are so bad, what does it say about us? Because after all in 2019 we lost to them, and we lost badly. I know that hurts each and every one of you.

‘So, let’s get totally serious about this – we can win the next election.

‘This government can’t keep the fuel flowing, it can’t keep the shelves stocked and you’ve seen what happens when Boris Johnson wants more money – he goes straight for the wallets of working people.’

He urged activists to think of how they could ‘start to write the next chapter in our nation’s history, bending it towards the values that bring us, year after year to this conference hall to seek a better way’. 

‘I have loved my first full conference as leader but I don’t want to go through the same routine every year,’ he said.

‘In a few short years from now I want to be here with you talking about the difference we are making, the problems we are fixing as a Labour government.

‘That is what this party is for. That’s the object of the exercise and as the leader of this party I will always have that eye-on-the-object look. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.’ 

One of the hecklers, Carole Vincent is thought to be former Big Brother contestant and ex-Socialist Worker Party member. She told reporters afterwards that she expected Sir Keir to face a leadership challenge.

‘I don’t consider it to be heckling, I consider that I stood up and spoke out because it needed to be said,’ she said.

‘He had ignored – and this conference has ignored – people that have been standing up and asking for him to guarantee the 15 per cent rise for the NHS, a £15 minimum wage.’ 

She said she expected to be thrown out of the party for her actions, adding: ‘He had 10 pledges. He has reneged on most of those pledges. He talked about uniting the party. The party has never been so divided as it is now and it’s getting worse.

‘I probably will be expelled and that’s sad because I work bloody hard for this party. I don’t get paid for it, it’s because on my membership card it says this is a party of socialist democrats, it’s a socialist democratic party and that’s why I joined – so we all have a voice and we haven’t had a voice.’  

A Labour spokesman said they had expected protests, and the fact people had red pieces of paper to hold up suggested they were coordinated. 

He said he did not know whether the ripostes used against the hecklers by Sir Keir were rehearsed, but added there were only a ‘small number’ who were disruptive.

The spokesman said: ‘Ultimately it didn’t distract from the message that Keir wanted to get across. He delivered the speech in the positive, optimistic, confident tone that I said yesterday was what he would be doing and that’s what he did today.

‘We’re very happy with how it went, obviously.’

Asked about the Blairite tinge to the speech, the spokesman said: ‘I know that it sometimes comes as a surprise to journalists, but it is not a surprise to me that actually the vast majority of Labour Party members are very proud of what the last Labour government achieved.

‘If you go around to Labour Party events you constantly hear people being proud of what we did in government. It shows the value of winning, it is only by winning that you can make change happen. That is what today’s speech is about.’

The leadership’s main aim at conference has been to show voters the party has changed since Mr Corbyn – at that time backed by Sir Keir – led it to electoral catastrophe in 2019.

Shadow cabinet members privately accept that SIr Keir has an almost impossible task to overturn Boris Johnson’s 80-strong majority in a single election.

They are already urging him to cling on if he loses the poll, which some believe could come as early as next year, but manages to make significant progress against the ‘popular’ PM.  

The mood in Brighton this week has been one of grim resolve as Sir Keir and his allies try to get a grip on the party machine. 

But efforts to highlight policies have been largely overshadowed by rows over party rule changes, splits with his deputy Angela Rayner, and the surprise resignation of shadow cabinet minister Andy McDonald, who accused Sir Keir of making the party ‘more divided than ever’. 

SIR KEIR STARMER ACCUSES JEREMY CORBYN OF ALMOST ‘OBLITERATING’ LABOUR

Sir Keir said that under his leadership Labour will never again ‘go into an election with a manifesto that is not a serious plan for government’ as he launched a stinging attack on Mr Corbyn. 

He pointed out that the conference in Brighton is the first held since the 2019 general election which saw the party crash to its ‘worst defeat since 1935’.

He said that the party’s activists and ‘loyal voters’ had helped save Labour from ‘obliteration’ under his predecessor.

Sir Keir said Labour must ‘understand and persuade the voters who rejected us’ at the last election.

He said: ‘To those Labour voters who said their grandparents would turn in their graves, that they couldn’t trust us with high office, to those who reluctantly chose the Tories because they didn’t believe our promises were credible.

‘To the voters who thought we were unpatriotic or irresponsible or that we looked down on them, I say these simple but powerful words: We will never under my leadership go into an election with a manifesto that is not a serious plan for government.’

LABOUR LEADER STRESSES HIS PATRIOTIC CREDENTIALS AND IMPORTANCE OF ‘BRITISH VALUES’

The Labour leader spoke at length about his time as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

He said that those are ‘three very important words’, telling the conference hall: ‘Crown brings home the responsibility of leading part of the nation’s legal system.

‘Prosecution tells you that crime hurts and victims need justice to be done.

‘Service is a reminder that the job is bigger than your own career advancement.’

The comments will be seen as an attempt by Sir Keir to bolster his patriotic credentials after a party plan was leaked in February this year which said Labour must make ‘use of the [Union] flag, veterans [and] dressing smartly’ to win back voters.

Sir Keir closed his speech by saying the UK is at a ‘big moment that demands leadership’.

He said his leadership would be based on the principles of ‘work, care, equality, security’ which he described as ‘British values’.

He said: ‘I think of them as the values that take you right to the heart of the British public. That is where this party must always be.’

LABOUR TRIES TO SEIZE CONTROL OF CRIME BATTLEGROUND

Sir Keir laid down the gauntlet to Boris Johnson on the key issue of crime – viewed by senior figures in the party as one of the key battlegrounds ahead of the next general election.

The Labour leader said that ‘under my leadership, the fight against crime will always be a Labour issue’.

He vowed to ‘strengthen legal protections for victims of crime’, adding: ‘We won’t walk around the problem. We’ll fix it.’

In one of only a handful of policy announcements in the speech, Sir Keir said a Labour government would ‘fast-track rape and serious sexual assault cases and we will toughen sentences for rapists, stalkers and domestic abusers’.

‘Today I’m here to tell you what I stand for,’ he said. ‘But I also want to tell you what I won’t stand for. I won’t stand for the 2 million incidents of anti-social behaviour this year.

‘I won’t stand for the record levels of knife crime that we have in this country today. And I won’t stand 9 out of 10 crimes going unsolved.’

SIR KEIR BLASTS ‘TRICKSTER’ BORIS JOHNSON

The Labour leader is normally reserved in his criticism of Boris Johnson and today he insisted he does not like political point scoring.

But he used his speech to lash the PM as he accused him of being a ‘trivial man’ who is a ‘showman with nothing left to show’.

Sir Keir claimed that Mr Johnson believes the ‘rules don’t apply to him’ but ‘that’s not how I do business’.

He sought to compare his professional career with Mr Johnson’s as he said he had ‘spent my entire working life trying to get justice done’.

He said: ‘In 2003, when I was working with the Policing Board of Northern Ireland, while I was learning up close how hard it is to make split-second life-and-death decisions in a riot. As I worked with the police to create a lasting institution in accordance with the Good Friday Agreement. Boris Johnson was a guest on Top Gear where, in reference to himself, he said to Jeremy Clarkson: ‘you can’t rule out the possibility that beneath the elaborately constructed veneer of a blithering idiot, lurks a blithering idiot’.’

Sir Keir said that he does not believe Mr Johnson is a ‘bad man’ but added: ‘I think he is a trivial man. I think he’s a showman with nothing left to show. I think he’s a trickster who has performed his one trick.’

SIR KEIR VOWS TO BOOST NHS MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

The Labour leader said that ‘one of the urgent needs of our time is mental health’ and that the party would ‘guarantee that support will be available in less than a month’.

Sir Keir said Labour would recruit more than 8,500 extra mental health professionals to support care for a million more people every year.

He vowed that ‘under Labour, spending on mental health will never be allowed to fall’.

Sir Keir also warned that ‘small politics will no longer do’ because of the UK’s rapidly ageing population.

He said a Labour government would place an emphasis on prevention in order to reduce the pressure on the NHS.

LABOUR LEADER CHANNELS TONY BLAIR’S ‘EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION’ MOMENT

Sir Keir did not mention Tony Blair by name in his speech, but the Labour leader did hint at the ex-PM’s legacy as he set out the party’s plans on education reform.

‘Education is so important I am tempted to say it three times,’ he said, in a call back to Mr Blair’s Labour conference speech in1996 when he said his three main priorities were ‘education, education, education’.

Sir Keir said that ‘when you don’t invest in young people, the whole nation suffers and the less fortunate are left behind’.

He said a Labour government would launch ‘the most ambitious school improvement plan in a generation’.

He said young people under Labour would be taught ‘practical life skills’, with two weeks of compulsory work experience reinstated and a guarantee that every child would be able to see a careers adviser.

Sir Keir vowed to re-write the national curriculum to create a ‘curriculum for tomorrow’.

Labour would add a fourth pillar to ‘reading, writing and arithmetic’ as the foundation for learning in the form of ‘digital skills’.

SIR KEIR PROMISES ALL LABOUR PLEDGES WILL BE AFFORDABLE

A bid to establish a reputation for economic competence was at the heart of Sir Keir’s speech.

He said Labour’s approach to the economy would be guided by three principles: ‘The greater part of the burden should not fall on working people. The balance between smaller and larger businesses should be fair. And we will chase down every penny to ensure that people working people, paying their taxes always get value for money.’

He reiterated shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’ plan to create a new Office for Value for Money to scrutinise all spending.

‘There will be no promises we can’t keep or commitments we can’t pay for,’ he said.

He also pledged to set a target to invest a minimum of three per cent of GDP in science and research and development.

LABOUR VOWS TO INSULATE EVERY UK HOME IN BID TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE

On climate change, Sir Keir said ‘action is needed, not in the future, but now’.

He said upgrading the nation’s homes would be central to his plans to reduce emissions.

He pledged to insulate ‘every home that needs it, to make sure it is warm, well-insulated and costs less to heat’.

Labour would also roll out a Clean Air Act, with every one of the party’s policies having to meet a ‘net zero’ test.

He hailed Ms Reeves’ plan to spend an additional £28billion a year on helping the nation go green.

SIR KEIR SLAMS NICOLA STURGEON’S ‘BAD GOVERNMENT’

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn were not the only politicians to be criticised by Sir Keir.

He also turned his fire on Nicola Sturgeon as he vowed to counter her attempts to secure Scottish independence.

‘Scotland is in the unfortunate position of having two bad governments – the Tories at Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood,’ he said.

‘When Nicola Sturgeon took office she said she wanted to be judged on her record. These days, with the poorest in society less well-educated and less healthy and the tragedy of so many drug-related deaths we hear rather less about the SNP’s record.’

Sir Keir said the SNP and the Tories ‘walk in lock step’ as they ‘both exploit the constitutional divide for their own ends’.

‘Labour is the party that wants to bring our nations together,’ he said.

SIR KEIR SIGNALS MAJOR DEPARTURE FROM CORBYN ERA ON DEFENCE

The Labour premier tried to rebuild the party’s reputation on defence and national security as he signalled a major change in approach on the issues when compared to his predecessor.

Mr Corbyn was a fierce critic of NATO and military intervention.

But Sir Keir told activists: ‘Labour is the party of NATO, the party of international alliances.

‘Under Labour we will rebuild our alliances, we will mend broken relationships and we will do right by the great Britons who serve in our armed forces.’