Keir Starmer to outline plans for 10 years as PM in speech to Labour conference

10 October 2023 , 07:00

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Labour leader Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria prepare for his speech to the party's conference in Liverpool (Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Keir Starmer will today launch his bid for 10 years as Prime Minister as he unveils plans for a “decade of national renewal”.

The Labour leader will vow to “turn our backs on never-ending Tory decline” and give the British people the “government they deserve” when he addresses activists at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool. Officials said his speech “will answer the question, 'Why Labour?’” as he outlines how firing up economic growth, providing safer streets, cheaper homegrown British power and a “rejuvenated” NHS “will get Britain its future back”.

Striking an optimistic tone, Mr Starmer will say: “What is broken can be repaired, what is ruined can be rebuilt.” During his three-and-a-half years rescuing the party after its worst general election result since 1935, Mr Starmer overhauled party structures and pledged to root out anti-Semitism which gripped the grassroots under Jeremy Corbyn’s premiership.

The party chief will tell delegates that under his leadership it is “a changed Labour Party, no longer in thrall to gesture politics, no longer a party of protest”. He will add: “Those days are done, we will never go back.”

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Speaking about how the cost-of-living crisis has hammered families, he will say: “We should never forget that politics should tread lightly on people’s lives, that our job is to shoulder the burden for working people - carry the load, not add to it.” He will add: “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 us to build a new Britain and we are the builders.”

Labour's national campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden said Mr Starmer wanted voters to understand the challenge facing an incoming government. "What he's doing is he's setting out realistically that after 13 years of the Conservatives it's going to take time to turn things round,” Mr McFadden told the BBC.

"He is levelling with the public here, he's saying we can't solve everything overnight but what we can do is turn the page and begin a process of national renewal. He's assuming nothing, he's being honest with the people about the time it's going to take to face up to the challenges the country is facing right now."

Ben Glaze