David Edgerton
Starmer wrapped himself in the flag, in British values and decencies, in a critique of globalisation and decline, in a changed Labour party, in fiscal rectitude, in artificial intelligence. In short, he stuck to his guns, and added a bit of anti-Reform passion. The problem is that decency is incompatible with his continuing support for Israeli policy, or his sucking up to Trump. His nationalism is incompatible with his going to “America to grub around for money” to get the foreign investment he boasts about. His celebration of unity is incompatible with his factionalism and his dishonest critique of the left. The bigger issue is that his policies for reversing the “decline” are barely different from those which caused it in the first place. He has indeed changed the Labour Party but into a Blue Labour-washed version of the Tories.
David Edgerton is Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King’s College London.
Ayesha Hazarika
We finally saw some real passion from Starmer about his vision of Britain. His language on fighting racism and standing up for decency over division felt energetic and from the heart. He sounded fully invested. His full-throated attack on Farage and Reform marked a departure from simply trying to chase the turquoise tide. This came as a relief in the hall but should also do some work for him outside as Labour is losing support to the Lib Dems and Greens.
I’m glad he didn’t reel off a shopping list of random policies but rather focused on telling a more emotional story about his positive vision of Britain. Often the leader’s speech is about trying to speak beyond the conference to people at home but this was different. Given the febrile climate, Starmer really needed to win over the people in the room and prove that he had something meaty to say. Mission accomplished. But he’s still in the fight of his life.
Ayesha Hazarika is a former political adviser, broadcaster and Labour peer
Danny Kruger
Starmer is right – this is a fork in the road. One way lies the politics of late-stage liberalism: international human rights, Net Zero and mass migration. The other way lies the politics of national preference: a sovereign Parliament, secure borders, affordable energy and a Brits-only welfare state. It is obvious which the public wants. Starmer calls Reform racist, traducing not just Nigel Farage but the millions of people who support him. It is a deeply immoral step, for it attempts to put Reform outside the bounds of democratic legitimacy – implicitly justifying repression and indeed violence.
Labour know they are in the fight of their lives. Their confused conference – including their pale imitation of our “racist” migration policy – explains why they will lose. They came into government with no plan, under a leader with no philosophy except a commitment to the Human Rights Act. Their voters are abandoning them, and with good cause.
Danny Kruger is the MP for East Wiltshire who defected to Reform UK on 15 September.
Steve Richards
By some margin this was the best speech Keir Starmer has delivered to a Labour conference. No doubt there were several authors but at least the words sounded as if they were written by him. The authentic voice was urgently needed after the trauma of the summer when Starmer spoke of an “island of strangers” only to disown the phrase. At the weekend, Starmer ad-libbed in an interview that Nigel Farage’s immigration policies were “racist”. In the past there would have been a panic-stricken rowing back from Starmer’s fearfully cautious team. This time Starmer seemed liberated by his improvised clarity. In his speech the term “racist” recurred several times in relation to Reform, the accusation confidently inserted in the speech after his weekend interview.
Starmer never quite knew how to oppose the Tories, advised by Blairites to hail Margaret Thatcher and condemning the Tories’ record without proposing to change much of the economic architecture. Reform gives him clearer definition. He has suddenly become more accessibly assertive in battling for his version of Britain against theirs. Still, the flag-waving was over the top and there are titanic challenges to come. He made no broad argument about the need for tax rises. Yet those rises are coming in the budget and he needs to clear the ground. If he does not do so there is big trouble ahead. He found his voice in this speech. Get the politics of the budget wrong and the speech will seem like ancient history.
Steve Richards presents a twice-weekly podcast Rock N Roll Politics and is a former political editor of the New Statesman.
Faiza Shaheen
After a year of Reform-like rhetoric on immigration, parts of Starmer’s speech were a welcome change of tune. He’s right that addressing living standards is key to tackling division, but the problem is Labour’s policies are divorced from the rhetoric we heard today.
The number one mission of economic growth requires tackling the concentration of wealth at the top of society. Fifty families now have more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent of the population. When the rich hoard wealth like this, there’s less for others to spend; competition is stifled and talent is lost. Yet the Prime Minister took issue with a wealth tax – a policy that would signal this government is serious about fundamentally changing an economy rigged against everyday people and help bring about the change people so desperately need.
You can renew this country and build an economy from the grassroots, as we heard today, by reforming our unfair tax system. This means ending the two-tier system that taxes ordinary people more than the wealth of the super rich.
Faiza Shaheen is an economist and community campaigner.
John McTernan
Keir Starmer had to produce the speech of his life at conference – and he did! Under pressure he came out fighting. Against the voices that said Britain could never get better. Against those who argue that increasing borrowing would lessen the hard choices facing the Labour government. Against Nigel Farage and Reform UK whose policies he explicitly described as divisive and racist. And he got standing ovation after standing ovation – all of which were well deserved.
Starmer was able to say powerfully and passionately what he was against because he set out clearly a vision for the country — building a better Britain for all – and what its values were – Dignity and Respect. The language of class was back – he said working class four or five times in the speech, a welcome relief from the leaden and evasive phrase “working people”. The headline announcement reflected this – replacing the target of half of you people going to uni with two in three going to uni or onto a gold standard apprenticeship.
The politician who won a landslide last year is back – tempered and strengthened by adversity.
John McTernan is a political strategist and was previously political secretary to Tony Blair and communications director to Julia Gillard.
Morgan Jones
At a fringe last night, former Communities Secretary John Denham described what we have been seeing over the last year as the problems of a government acting without ideology, which, he said, is ultimately a tool to understand how power is distributed, and therefore vital to running the state. Keir Starmer’s speech today was good – it jumped around a bit, and sometimes seemed structurally odd, but that is perhaps the nature of speeches designed with clipping in mind. But it did not solve the problem of ideology currently afflicting the Labour Party. I am persuaded that (among other things) the internet has given us a politics that is increasingly post-material, and in this context ideology and narrative become even more important. We heard, as well we should, plenty of hits on Reform (including, interestingly, reference to lies told about Brexit), but while the diagnosis of problems was sound, there was no overarching argument about why Labourist social democracy has the answers for Britain and Britain in the world and understands how power acts today.
Morgan Jones is the co-editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy
Parth Patel
For the first time the Prime Minister described his opponents as ethnonationalists, giving much needed definition to his political project. Channelling Rousseau, Raymond Williams and Tom Nairn, he is attempting to supersede rather than cast aside the right’s revival of community and national politics. Labour wants to prosecute a politics of the common good and is asking Britons to see themselves as participants not spectators. That will require deliberate efforts to develop and join up policy agendas on constitutional reform, the welfare state, national industry, foreign policy, immigration and the arts.
Parth Patel is the associate director for democracy and politics at the Institute for Public Policy Research.
Maurice Glasman
Walking through central Liverpool to hear Keir Starmer’s Conference speech on a sunny afternoon was a sublime experience. The streets were full, the shops were buzzing and no one whatsoever was the slightest bit interested that the Prime Minister was speaking five minutes away. When I mentioned his name in pubs or in cabs the utter indifference turned hostile. The mood of the City to the Conference was passive aggressive. Even Red Liverpool is turning blue, and I predict good times ahead for Everton.
Keir Starmer’s speech was brave, without being courageous, in that condemning racism is not really a tough thing to do at a Labour Conference. He didn’t mention that AI will lead to a devastation of public sector jobs and that contribution will define public sector reform but he did do something brave. He scrapped the 50 per cent going to university pledge that defined New Labour. He did honour vocation and skilled labour; he did talk about the common good. He did talk about patriotism without calling it progressive. It felt significant. I walked into Conference and everyone was talking about Andy Burnham but now I am leaving there is only one name on people’s lips. Shabana Mahmood. And that is the most significant change of all.
Maurice Glasman is a Labour life peer in the House of Lords.
James Meadway
Undoubtedly this was Keir Starmer’s best speech since becoming Labour leader, but that’s a low bar. It may be that the very real threat of a Reform government – a prospect made grimly apparent, more than anything else, by his own government’s failures – that has finally provoked Starmer into doing something he has not done since becoming party leader: and that is to actually show some political leadership, rather than the clotted rhetoric and petty authoritarianism that has otherwise defined his time in office. His attack on Reform’s mass deportation plans as racist was, for once, a direct hit on Farage’s party.
It has had some of the desired effect: Reform’s response has been neuralgic, a panicked Farage provoked into a live, broadcast response. And party conference lapped up Starmer’s direct attacks on Farage and Reform.
It’s not enough. Labour’s framing of the next election as themselves vs Reform won’t work on an electorate tired of political blackmail, now offered other plausible choices. For as long as Labour cannot resolve the logjam around economic policy – tangled up around weak growth, and an unwillingness to confront the bankers or the super-rich – his government will only continue to underperform.
James Meadway is an economist. He hosts the weekly economics podcast, Macrodose.
[Further reading: Ideas for Keir]
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