Starmer Pledges ‘Decade of National Renewal’ in Conference Speech

Labour party leader, Sir Keir Starmer delivers the leader's speech, covered in glitter after a protester stormed the stage on the third day of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, England on October 10, 2023. Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Sir Keir Starmer has promised a “decade of national renewal” for Britain under Labour rule, setting out party policies that will reverse the decline brought on by the Conservatives.

The Labour leader’s party conference speech kicked off with a security breach. A protester burst on the stage and threw glitter on Sir Keir just as he was about to address the audience.

Sir Keir “brushed off” the incident and focused on delivering his message to the conference with the emphasis on getting “Britain its future back.”

He revealed what he plans to do, if Labour wins the next general election and stays on for two terms.

“Let’s set the course. Let’s get Britain building again, take back our streets, switch on great British energy, tear down the barriers to opportunity, get our NHS back on its feet,” Sir Keir said.

He described Labour as “healers and builders” of the new Britain, unveiling the party’s house-building mission of a new generation of towns in high-growth areas with housing needs.

The new 1.5 million homes plan will not affect the green belt, Sir Keir said. Under the “grey belt” plan, scrubland and car parks will be released for development.

“We'll get shovels in the ground, cranes in the sky, and build the next generation of Labour new towns,” he said.

Why Labour?

Labour enjoys a 44 percent lead in opinion polls over Conservatives with 24 percent. But the opposition wants to convince the voters to choose Labour for Labour, and not because they have lost confidence in the Conservatives.

Listing the reasons why voters should choose Labour at the next election, Sir Keir said that the party was committed to long-term stability for researchers and innovators and a new generation of technical colleges.

He also touched on Labour’s plan for the creation of a new publicly-owned and Scotland-based company, Great British Energy, meant to cut energy bills and deliver jobs.

“Clean British energy is cheaper than foreign fossil fuels,” Sir Keir said.

In contrast to the Conservatives, who “row back on our climate missions,” Sir Keir said that Labour’s message is “speed ahead.”

The speech had many references to the struggles of the working people, faced with the cost-of-living crisis and other barriers to success. The Labour leader condemned Westminster’s “high walls” preventing “people like Rishi Sunak” from seeing the country before them.

Mr. Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, came under pressure in 2022 after it emerged that her non-domiciled status meant she didn’t have to pay UK tax on income earned abroad.

Under Labour, the non-dom status will be abolished, said Sir Kier. The money will be invested into the NHS to offer more appointments and clear the backlog, he added.

The Labour leader said that his “must be the government that finally transforms our NHS.”

The focus should also be on preventing illnesses and keeping people out of hospitals in the first place, Sir Keir told the conference. The party committed to better community health care and guaranteed mental health care.

The scale of the challenge for Labour would be immense compared with his predecessors, the party leader said.

“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 will have to be all three,” Sir Keir told the conference.

The Conservatives said that Sir Keir’s speech was “more of the same old short-term approach that has dominated politics for the past 30 years.”

The Tories criticised the Labour leader for not mentioning inflation and illegal immigration to the UK via small boats.