SIR KEIR STARMER offered no relief from the gloom in his address to Labour conference yesterday.
In a policy-light address, which announced almost no initiatives, the Prime Minister vaguely pointed towards a better future which he struggled to describe.
Instead, speaking in a lecturing and sometimes hectoring tone he recommitted to “tough decisions” justified by reference to the Tory legacy.
And he defended the axing of the winter fuel allowance for tens of millions of older people, claiming that there would be “no return to Tory austerity. We will rebuild our public services, protect working people and do this in a Labour way. That is a promise.
“And if you can’t take that on faith, perhaps because you’re concerned about the winter fuel allowance, then I get that. If this path were popular or easy we would have walked it already.
“But the risk of showing to the world, as the Tories did, that this country does not fund its policies properly, that is a risk that we can never take again,” he said in words reflective of the domination of Treasury orthodoxy on his thinking.
Starmer’s best-received passages, which drew several standing ovations, were his attacks on the far right which rioted in many communities during the summer.
Having sounded equivocal in identifying the racism underpinning the riots at the time, he found his voice in Liverpool.
He said: “I will never accept the argument made not just by the usual suspects, but also by people who should have known better, that millions of people concerned about immigration are one and the same thing as the people who smashed up businesses, who targeted mosques, attempted to burn refugees, scrawled racist graffiti over walls, Nazi salutes at the cenotaph, attacked NHS nurses.
“We debate our differences, we do not settle them with violent thuggery, and racism is vile.
“So to those who say the only way to love your country is to hate your neighbour because they look different, I say not only do we reject you, we know that you will never win.”
But he also stressed that he understood concerns about migration, as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had emphasised in her own conference speech, and said: “It’s about control of migration, it’s always been about control.
“That is what people have voted for, time and again. They weren’t just ignored after Brexit. The Tories gave them the exact opposite, an immigration system deliberately reformed to reduce control. Because in the end they are the party of the uncontrolled market.”
It was only in his peroration that the Prime Minister gave some clues as to what a Labour Britain might end up looking like.
“Millions who feel better off, without being told they are by politicians, going to the supermarket without a calculator, because the nation’s numbers now add up,” he said.
“More money in their pocket to do the things they love and more faith in public services, because Labour has rebuilt them. An NHS facing the future, more security and dignity at work.
“Town centres thriving, streets safe, borders controlled at last, clean energy harnessed for industrial renewal, new homes, new towns, new hospitals, roads and schools, a new future for our children. That is what people will get. And mark my words, we will deliver it.”
This would all be the consequences of long-term decisions taken now to promote growth, the premier argued, outlining a perspective of national malaise: “Britain is no longer sure of itself. Our story is uncertain. The hope beaten out of us.”
Starmer called for “restraint and de-escalation” between Israel and Lebanon and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but mangled his message by demanding the “return of the sausages” when he meant “hostages.”
In one of the very few substantive announcements, he confirmed that GB Energy, the publicly owned green energy company, would be headquartered in Aberdeen.
And military veterans, domestic abuse victims and care workers will be given better access to social housing, he announced.
It was not a speech likely to turn around Starmer’s plummeting popularity.
An opinion poll for Savanta found that his favourability rating has dropped by 21 per cent since the election, and by 28 per cent among Labour voters.
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak welcomed the speech, saying: “Unions stand ready to work with him and his government to urgently repair and rebuild this country.
“It is also vital those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share towards building a better Britain.”
Yet he was rubbished for stating “every pensioner will be better off with Labour.”
Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said: "The Prime Minister simply can’t make the guarantee that every pensioner will be better off.
“With the winter fuel payment being removed from so many people, the government is gambling with pensioners’ ability to keep warm this winter and with that, their health and wellbeing.”
