Starmer Says He’s Ready to Be Unpopular to Hit UK Challenges
(Bloomberg) -- Keir Starmer warned Britons he will take “tough, long-term decisions” that will make him unpopular and said Labour’s program of “national renewal” is unchanged despite a slew of setbacks early in his premiership.
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“The time is long overdue for politicians to level with you about the trade-offs this country faces,” Starmer said in his first keynote speech as prime minister to the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool on Tuesday. “Because if the last few years have shown us anything, it’s that if you bury your head because things are difficult, your country goes backwards.”
Starmer’s conference speech — which was heavy on lofty rhetoric about his vision for Britain but light on policy details — was a bid to re-inject momentum into his administration and reassure his party he has a long-term plan to use the mandate won in July’s general election. The remit was also to restore some of the feel-good factor that had been lost, and he pointedly listed what his government has done so far including progress on clean energy, planning rules and legislation to bring railways into back into public ownership.
The “work of change has begun,” Starmer said, riffing on Labour’s slogan for both the election and the annual conference.
But the speech wasn’t without glitches, including a protester and an awkward verbal gaffe by Starmer. In a section on foreign policy, the premier urged peace in the Middle East and called for the release of hostages in Gaza, misspeaking the word as “sausages” before immediately correcting himself.
The speech came at a sensitive time for Starmer, who was under pressure to retake control of the narrative after weeks of negative headlines about donations and gifts accepted by senior ministers, and infighting among aides. The backlash over the decision to remove winter energy assistance from about 10 million pensioners also fed into the government’s slumping ratings.
An Opinium survey prior to Labour conference found Starmer polling less favorably than his predecessor Rishi Sunak, while an Ipsos survey showed six in 10 Britons were unhappy with the Labour government.
Part of the problem stems from the gloomy messaging from Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves about the state of the economy and the £22 billion ($29.5 billion) hole they said the Conservatives left in the public finances. Their warnings about what the government will need to do to fix the problem have coincided with a dip in consumer confidence, while businesses have warned that raising taxes in the Oct. 30 budget will undermine growth.
“It’s still too much backward looking, too much the Tories broke it, too much this is going to be hard, and not enough of what is going to be hard,” Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College London, said of the speech. “It still left a hole where the political story of what this government wants to tell is going to be.’
Just as Reeves used her keynote speech on Monday to try to inject some optimism with a promise of “active government,” so Starmer also tried to flesh out the link between the pain of fixing the economy in the short-term and the ability to repair things like the ailing National Health Service further out.
“I will not do it with false hope,” he said. “The cost of filling that black hole in our public finances, that will be shared fairly.” It was a theme he returned to throughout his speech. “We will rebuild our public services, protect working people, and do this in a Labour way,” he said.
That reference to the “Labour way” was another indication that the government is preparing measures such as higher taxation, increased borrowing and greater public spending to tackle the challenges facing the UK. Starmer repeatedly blamed the Tories for 14 years in which they “performed the politics of easy answers rather than use the power of government to serve our country.”
In criticizing the Tories, Starmer was also alluding to the electoral threat posed by the populist right, where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK made major gains in the election. The premier knows how voters perceive his government’s approach to mass immigration will help determine if Labour wins a second term.
“We have always accepted concerns about immigration are legitimate,” Starmer said. “I have never thought we should be relaxed about some sectors importing labor when there are millions of young people, ambitious and highly talented, who are desperate to work and contribute to their community.”
Starmer said he would reform apprenticeships and “re-balance funding in our training system back to young people.” The government also vowed to ban firms that flout employment laws from bringing in more migrant workers.
But Starmer also tried to put Labour’s stamp on the migration issue, by rejecting the anti-immigration element of the rioting that broke out in UK cities over the summer. He said Britons must be realistic, and accept that processing asylum claims ignored by the Tories would mean more people being deported, as well as more people being given permission to stay.
It was one example of the trade-offs Starmer said Britons must accept for his “rebuild” project to work. Cheaper energy will require more pylons, he said, just as more affordable housing needs communities to accept more building.
After the speech, reaction from trade unions like the GMB and TUC was positive. But it’s the views outside the room that Starmer will most worry about.
“I understand many of the decisions we must take will be unpopular,” he said. “If they were popular, they’d be easy.”
--With assistance from Alex Wickham, Ailbhe Rea and Alex Morales.
(Updates with Starmer comments throughout.)
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