Tag: 2024

The speech made by Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, on 30 May 2024.

Thank you, Michael. That was a really powerful address from you, and it’s a big thing, to come up here and say what you just said, and it’s means a huge amount, to make the big decision to change the party you vote for, as a life long Tory voter, is a really big thing.

For me, it vindicates all the hard work of the last four and a half years. I was determined to change this Labour Party and put it back in the service of working people, and your words are so important to me, to all of our candidates, to all of our staff, to all of the Labour movement, when you say: life long Tory voter, I’ve had enough, I’m voting Labour. Thank you, Michael.

Vaughan, thank you for your words. Thank you for your leadership here in Wales, it’s been really good to work with you so far in my position as Leader of the Opposition. I’m really looking forward to a new partnership, where we can both deliver together for Wales. Thank you Vaughan.

And thank you all for that incredibly warm reception when we walked in. It was fantastic to see everybody in the room, such a great feeling, and Abergavenny, what am amazingly beautiful place. We arrived last night and the sun was shining, absolutely stunning.

Not that long ago, Vic and I and the kids were at Crickhowell, we holiday up there. It is a really beautiful part of Wales, and many people in this room will have been to the Bear Pub, I’m sure in Crickhowell. If you haven’t been, make sure you go before you leave this part of the world.  As Caroline Harris will attest, Vic and I holiday in Wales every year. We go down to Swansea, she looks after and last year we were in The Gower near Oxwich and it’s really really beautiful.

So I love being here, and it’s fantastic to be back here today in Wales. And what an opportunity, what a chance to launch our campaign. Because Rishi Sunak has finally called the General Election. He has given us our chance to take our case to the country, and I don’t know about you, but I think Wales has been waiting for this General Election for a very very long time.

And we in the Labour Party have been working for, and waiting of this general election for a very very long time. And if just over a week ago, Rishi Sunak thought he was laying a careful trap of an ambush, he didn’t get catch us. He caught himself in his own ambush, so now we get the chance. What went through all of those speeches this morning, is this strong sense that now is the time for change.

Change and hope for a better future. With that sense of national renewal, taking our communities, our countries forward for the future. So I say to you, if you were a family, that’s been struggling with the cost of living for a long time now. And I mean struggling. Struggling across Wales, struggling elsewhere, if you are a business that has been absolutely up against it these past few years, and if you have been serving your country, or serving your community, then this election, this election is for you.

Because this is the chance to end the chaos and the division, to turn the page, to rebuild Wales and rebuild our entire country together to elect a government that as Vaughan said, would serve working people here in Wales and make that connection – a government in Westminster, and government in Wales, working together and delivering for Wales.

I don’t know about, but I think we have all had enough of fourteen years of chaos and division. Chaos and division, feeding chaos and division. And it feels like we’re spinning round and round in circles and getting absolutely nowhere.

And there’s a cost to that. There’s a human cost to that. Go to Port Talbot, talk as I did who are facing the prospect of losing their job in the steel industry. And I say to Rishi Sunak, go and look those people in the eye as I’ve done, and you’ll see their anxiety about the damage that is being done by a government that doesn’t have a plan. A government that is too divide to take our county and our industries forward. Go and talk to those workers, those families, years and years of investment, skills that they have put in, facing now an uncertain future. That is the human cost, that they are paying, for a Government that is divided, chaotic and for a Prime Minister who won’t pick up the phone to the former First Minister in Wales to do a blind thing about those jobs.

I’ve been there, I’ve looked them in the hours, and I’ve told those workers: I will fight for every single job that they have there and for the future of steel here in Wales. We must fight.

Because this is a change election. There are two futures, two futures out there on the 4th of July. Two paths that we can take. It is a very very clear choice. And we need to spell it out. More chaos and division, cos they’re not going to change. It would be more – fourteen years already – another five years of chaos and division, non-delivery and failure.

Or, turn the page, hope and unity, and rebuild our communities and our countries with Labour. A Government that works for you. That tires cup no more conflict, between the first minister here and the prime minister in London, but both working together for Wales Imagine what could be delivered for Wales, with that combination of two government. This is a huge prize. To elect a Government that wants devolution to work. That doesn’t want the conflict, will get around the table, will work together, and every day deliver for the working people of Wales.

So the first thing we have to do is end that chaos and division. The good news is, the good news is, you don’t have to put up with it anymore.

A vote for Labour is a vote to turn the page to change our country. We’ve changed the Labour Party. Put it back in the service of working people. We are humbly asking permission from people for the opportunity to change our country and put it back in the service of working people.

Now I know that will be difficult. I’m not going to stand here and say it will be easy. It will be difficult. Tireless work. But I’ve never shied away from the difficult. When I was heading up the CPS, we had to change it, it was difficult. Many people said don’t do It, slow down. But we changed it.

When I worked in Northern Ireland, it was difficult work. We were trying to change the police service, so it served all communities. It was difficult, painstaking work, but we did it.

And here in the Labour Party, we had to change our party, and put it back in the service of working people. That wasn’t easy. Lots of people said don’t do it that way. Don’t go so fast. But we did it. We will never shy away from that.

Because driving through this for me has always been country first, party second.

And the opportunity is now there to work together to deliver for Wales. And there is no brighter future without Wales. Because I believe that the solidarity of working people is not just our identity, it is our argument. It’s the most powerful force for uniting all four nations across the United Kingdom. So this is the change that we must bring about.

It is difficult. It is ambitious. And like any ambition, you need first steps. You need to set out what the big thing is that you want to change, and what the first steps are going to be realise that change.

And that’s why I’m proud to set out our first steps here today. As you would expect, ruthlessly well-prepared. Thought through. Ready to deliver. Fully costs and fully funded. Which is more that can be said of the ideas the Tories are flinging on the table on the daily basis, rummaging around in the toy box of bad ideas and putting one on the table very day. Unfunded and uncosted.

Step 1: Economic stability.

In 2024, it feels odd to have to say to you that stability is change. But it is. That’s what we haven’t had. Stability. Because stability is the foundation of growth. We won’t get economic growth without stability. And we all know that if you lose control of the economy, it’s working people who pay the price.

Liz Truss lost control of the economy. And in Wales, working people on a mortgage, are now paying an average £240 more each and every month.

Rishi Sunak says we’ve turned a page.

Liz Truss says – put the people who helped me in the House of Lords.

Rishi Sunak says “OK”.

And in Wales, each and every day, families are paying hundreds of pounds more, a reminder of the cost, they are paying of the damage the Tories did. TATA Steel are paying the price. We have to invest if we want the future of steel in this country. We have to invest in all of the sectors that need it. That’s why we want to set up a National Wealth Fund. Other countries have it. We can drive our industries forward, with the growth that we need, the businesses, the partnership that will help us deliver. And that’s why economic stability is step one.

Step 2: Working with Vaughan, bringing down those waiting list.

There’s too many people on waiting lists. And we’ll do that – fully funded and fully costed. We’re going to get rid of the non-dom tax status. Properly. That’s the tax that allows the super rich to be here in this country, making their money, but not pay their tax here. I don’t agree with that. I think you should be paying your tax here, and we’ll make sure that people do.

And we’ll also crack down on those who are avoiding their tax. And with that money, we’ll bring down the waiting list. And that means we can invest in England in the NHS, 40,000 appointments each and every week. What a difference that will make. And that of course, as you all know, also means more money for the NHS in Wales. SO that in Wales are can build on the work that is being done.

Now this matters to me. My mum was a nurse. She was a really proud nurse. There are some fantastic pictures of her in her nursing uniform. Such pride. We say this yesterday buy the way as well, we were in Worcester at the college there where they ar training up the next generation of nurses. I saw the same pride there that  I saw on the pictures of my mum. It was her livelihood. But of course, it became her lifeline. Because she was extremely ill for most of her life, and literally her life depended on the care that the NHS gave her time and time and time again, in her particular case.

There other cases in this room as I look around. SO it matters to me, and it matters to Vaughan, because of cause the NHS saved his life earlier in his life. So it matters to me. And the idea of us being able to work together, to make sure the NHS is at its very best, capable of delivering. Not just back on it’s fit, but fit for the future.

Of course we are proud of the NHS. Roots right here. We look back great pride every year. Every year in the Labour movement we celebrate the NHS. It is one of the greatest achievements of any government ever, that Labour achievement. I want not just to look back, proudly, I want to look forward and be able to say that the NHS that we will build will be there for the next seventy years to be able toy rely on it in the way that Vaughan and I and my mum relied on it.

Step 3: Boarder Security Command.

Now the government has lost control of our borders. Lost control of our borders. 10,000 people this year alone have crossed the channel in small boats. Ten thousand. That is a record. So for all of the rhetoric, that is a record number coming across.

Nobody but nobody should be making that dangerous journey across the channel, and it’s a test for all governments as to how they respond to it – and would be governments – it’s a test for the current government, and for us: what is your response to this serious problem? Exploited vulnerable people being put in boats to go across the channel by gangs that are making huge amounts of money from them. And there is a choice, as there is a choice in pretty well everything political, what is your response:

You can either have a gimmick, or a serious response.

What has the government gone for? A gimmick. The Rwanda Scheme. Now Rishi Sunak never believed in it. When he first saw it, as Chancellor, he didn’t back it. He tried to block it. He didn’t think it would work. I’m not surprised. Because if the numbers going to Rwanda are less than one percent of those that arrive by small boat, the ninety nine per cent of them are not going.

And if you don’t think that the criminal gangs running this trade are telling that tot the people that they’re exploiting, then you don’t know criminal gangs. IT was never going to work. He knew it wouldn’t work,. But what did he do. He caved in to his party. He didn’t stick to his guns. He caved in. £600 million later, of taxpayer money – it’s not working, and what has he done, he has called an election before it can be tested.

Weakness upon weakness. In the Labour Party this changed Labour Party, we go for serious solutions. This is a serious problem. So, Border Security Command: A new elite force, with a new commander, bringing together MI5, the police, national security agencies, the crown prosecution services: an elite force, a new command with new resources and new powers drawing on counter terrorism powers. Because when I was Chief Prosecutors had to work with police and law enforcement across Europe to bring down terrorist gangs. These were sophisticated terrorist gangs, and we did it, and we bought them down, and they’re now serving time.

I will never accept that somehow the only gangs that apparently we can’t take down by the same means are the vile gangs running this smuggling trades. I’ll never accept that. We will break it.

Step 4: Great British Energy.

A publicly owned company. This is a company owned by the taxpayer, making money for the taxpayer, and investing in green British power. And I’ll tell you why we need it, Because we have been overly exposed by the terrible decisions of this government. Ten years or so ago, they said “cut the green crap”.

Remember that? Cut the green crap. And they stopped investing in renewables. They stopped the insulation that we need on our homes, and they left us exposed to the sort of challenges that we have internationally. Exposed.

And so when Ukraine was invaded, and Putin invaded. We were more exposed than other countries, and you’re paying more on your bill because of the approach that they took. Bills are up. We have got to turn that around.

It is a challenge, we’ll rise to that challenge. We’ve lost ten years because of the approach of the Tories. But it is also probably the single biggest opportunity that we have – not just for lower bills – but for the next generation of jobs. And Vaughan and I went to Holyhead Port just a few weeks ago, to look at the potential of that port, for floating offshore wind.

And we have a plan to transform that port to make sure it can handle floating off shore wind. Floating offshore wind is the next generation. It is going to be the gamechanger. And some country is going to get ahead and be the leader in the world. We’ve got the skills, we’ve the potential, we’ve got the ports, we need to take advantage of that, and what we’ve got from this government, is such a lack of direction that just as all the other countries are getting in to the race, they’re in the changing room.

Not prepared to let that happen. The race is on. I want to be not just in that race, but as you’d expect with me, I want to win that race. And I think we can win that race.

Step 5 – Tackling anti social behaviour.

Now I don’t know how many times people have said to me, when I was prosecutor, since I’ve been in politics: Keir, anti social behaviour, it’s low level, it’s low level crime. Shouldn’t really concentrate on it.

I don’t want to hear that ever again. It blights the lives of so many people.

Whether they are living in a huge community, a small community, a middle sized community. If you feel that you can’t open your front door after dark, if you feel can’t walk down your own street, or walk around your own community, if you feel as some of our young people do, that they can’t even walk down their high streets without antisocial behaviour, that has a huge impact on people’s lives and how they feel about taking themselves forward.

And, of course, on our business. It is not low level. And that’s why we’ll have 13,000 new neighbourhood police, working in their communities and dealing with antisocial behaviour, because I am determined that we will have a safe and secure environment for every single person in Wales and across the United Kingdom to live in, so that they can take themselves forward, and build the lives that they deserve.

Step 6 – Working with the Welsh Government, to ensure that we have, and are able through our education, to prepare our young children, your young people, for the lives that they are actually going to live and the work they’re actually going to do.

Now I was the first in my family to go to university. I know the power that education can have on a young person’s life. And I want every single young person, wherever they come from, whatever their background, to feel that success belongs to them.

Vaughan shares this approach. And Welsh Labour is already doing so much. The biggest I think school and college building programme since the 1960s. That’s the investment already happening here in Wales. Imagine how much more we could with the Government in Westminster working with the Government in Wales and delivering for our children, the future that they deserve.

So six steps, one card, make sure you’ve got yours. We’re going to take this to every single doorstep across Wales to make our case for a changed future. One card, six steps. Wales and Westminster working together. Turning the page. A change election. Where we can stop the chaos and division. Put an end to it. We can turn the page and rebuild Wales and the United Kingdom together, working together for the future. That is the way forward, that is the choice, Vote Labour.

The speech made by Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, on 27 May 2024.

Thank you all for coming here on a Bank Holiday Monday.

At least we’re by the seaside. And we are in Sussex, this is a part of the world I know very well. I have family here – close family. Both my sisters, and my uncle lived for many many years in Worthing.

Now, like everyone, I imagine my character is shaped by where I started in life. I grew up in a small town, not a million miles away from here, a place called Oxted on the Surrey-Kent border.

Similar to Lancing, minus the sea. And should you go to Oxted, some of you could stop off if you’re travelling back to London, you will see a place that, in my opinion, is about as English as it gets.

A mix of Victorian red bricks and pebble-dashed semis while all around you have rolling pastures and the beautiful chalk hills of the North Downs.

I loved growing up there. You could make easy pocket money clearing stones for the local farmers, that was actually my first job. And you could play football until the cows came home – literally. At my first football club, Boulthurst Athletic, we shared our home pitch with the local cows.

It’s part of why I love our country. Not just the beauty – or the football – also the sort of quiet, uncomplaining resilience. The togetherness of the countryside. That is the best of British.

And, to be honest – it’s just as well. Because you need it. I mean – anyone who thinks that hardship in Britain is found only in our cities, anyone who thinks there’s no struggle outside of our cities, yes even here in the South East, let me tell you – they know nothing of the countryside.

My own story is a testament to this. Because it wasn’t easy for us.  My dad was a tool-maker. He worked in a factory – my Mum was a nurse. But for most of her life she had a debilitating illness, Still’s disease. To be honest, she would hate that word, ‘debilitating’, because mum never gave up, she never complained. But her illness did shape our lives.

This was the 1970s of course, so there were hard times. I know what out of control inflation feels like, how the rising cost-of-living can make you scared of the postman coming down the path: “will he bring another bill we can’t afford?”

We used to choose the phone bill because when it got cut off, it was always the easiest to do without. We didn’t have mobiles back then but you could still just about get on with it.

Now, all this has stayed with me. It’s shaped the plan I have drawn up for Britain and the importance, above all, of economic stability. The need to never put working people through the whirlwind of chaos, the rising taxes, rising prices, rising mortgage costs – five thousand pounds for every working family – that’s what the Tories have inflicted on Britain.

The price working people have paid for their chaos, it’s unforgivable.

But as I reflect and look forward to this election I believe my background has also shaped my politics in a deeper way. Look – this England has always felt fairly removed from Westminster. Politics has always been something that happens far away.

And yet something more profound has changed during the last fourteen years of Tory Government. People now feel like more and more of the decisions that affect their community are taken by people who not only live miles away but have little empathy for their challenges.

A politics that is at best doing something to people, not with them. But at its worst, as we saw in horrifying detail in Westminster last week, those twin injustices – the Horizon and Infected Blood scandals, is something much, much darker even than that.

It’s about respect, or to be more precise, the lack of it – that is the canary in the mine of injustice. For a long time now working people have believed opportunity in Britain is stacked against them. But now we are at a dangerous new point close to crossing a rubicon on trust, not just in politics but in so many of the institutions that are meant to serve and protect the British people.

A moment where people no longer believe their values or interests carry the respect of those in power. And when you put that alongside a Government, that over fourteen years has left living standards in this country worse than when they found them, that has torched any semblance of standards in public life, Westminster parties that broke rules they put in place to save lives – rules they expected you to follow but ignored themselves – then you get a crisis in nothing less than who we are as a nation.

The values that have held us together, that have driven us on, through the hard times, towards our greatest achievements, taken to the edge by these Tories.

Healing these wounds is what national renewal means. Politics has to be about service. Britain must be a country that respects your contribution. Everyone – not just those at the top – deserves the chance to get on. These are the ideas I’m fighting for.

This is my project – a Britain once more in the service of working people. Country first, party second.

Now – I don’t know if this is a new politics or whether it’s simply a return to something older that used to be taken for granted.

But public service is the bare minimum you should expect. And you also deserve the security, the certainty, the basic ordinary hope, that Britain will be better for your children. No matter our struggles – we always had that in the 1970s – my parents always believed that, in the end, hard work would be rewarded and Britain would be better for their children. For me.

Now, that might not sound like much to some people but you can’t underestimate how important it is for working class families like mine, how much it comforted my parents.

It gave us a hope and a stability we could build our lives around and I believe it’s what working people want now – more than anything. They want to believe in the future. They want, when they say to their children “work hard and you can achieve anything”, for that to feel true.

But after fourteen years of Tory damage to our values, the service and security they should expect as a given. They just don’t believe it anymore – and that has consequences for all parties.

Look – whatever the polls say, I know there are countless people who haven’t decided how they’ll vote in this election. They’re fed up with the failure, chaos and division of the Tories, but they still have questions about us: has Labour changed enough? Do I trust them with my money, our borders, our security.

My answer is yes you can, because I have changed this party, permanently.

This has been my driving mission since day one. I was determined to change Labour so that it could serve the British people, give them a government that matches the ambition they have for their family and community.

And the very foundation of any good government is economic security, border security, national security. Make no mistake – if the British people give us the opportunity to serve, then this is their core test. It is always their core test. The definition of service. Can you protect this country?

I haven’t worked for four years on this, just to stop now. This is the foundation, the bedrock that our manifesto and our first steps, will be built upon.

And then on that foundation with an end to the Tory chaos. We can start to rebuild our country.

Step one – economic stability. The very foundation of growth, with tough spending rules that mean we can keep inflation, taxes and mortgages low. I am fed up of listening to the Prime Minister tell you we have turned the corner. That is a form of disrespect in itself.

Taxes – higher than at any time since the war. Chaos – hitting every working family to the tune of £5000, and a Prime Minister prepared to do it all over again. He says he wants to get rid of National Insurance. £46bn – that is currently used on your pension and the NHS and he’s not prepared to say how he will fund it.

That means, at this election – either your pension is under threat, or he’s prepared to blow the economy up all over again. He hasn’t learned a thing. Working people need stability. They want things to improve, they want things to move on, they want change.

But they expect you to take care of the public finances as well. Because if you lose control of the economy – it’s working people who pay the price. Liz Truss lost control of the economy. I am not prepared to let a Labour Government ever do that to working people.

That’s why stability is our first step – a non-negotiable pact with working people – the symbol of a changed Labour Party – ready to serve our country.

Step two – we will cut NHS waiting times. 40,000 extra appointments every week paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-doms.

Step three – we will launch a new Border Security Command with new specialist investigators, new resources, and new powers – including counter-terrorism powers. These vile criminals are making a fortune putting vulnerable people in boats made to order, sending them across the busiest shipping lane in the world. Nobody but nobody should be making that journey.

When I was Director of Public Prosecutions – I worked on operations that smashed terrorist gangs across Europe. I will never accept we can’t do the same for these vile gangs. Labour will secure Britain’s borders.

Step Four – we will set up Great British Energy, paid for by a windfall tax on the energy giants who made record profits while your bills went through the roof. A new company – owned by the taxpayer, making money for the taxpayer, harnessing the opportunity of clean British power, making us energy independent, removing Putin’s boot from our throat and cutting bills in your home – for good.

Step five – we’ll crackdown on anti-social behaviour. I don’t want to hear another person tell me this is low-level crime – I’ve been hearing that all my life. It blights communities big and small, it always has. I know Worthing well, as I say – my Uncle lived here. And three years ago – I walked around with the police here, talked to some of the people on the high street and they told me in no uncertain terms the impact anti-social behaviour was having on them.

So we will get more police on the streets in your town. 13,000 new officers and community support officers paid for by cutting down on wasteful contracts.

And step six – we’ll also get 6,500 new teachers in the classroom paid for by removing tax breaks on private schools, a down payment on an education system that we will reform. More creativity, more confidence, more resilience, for all children.

I was the first person in my family to go to university. I know the power of education. Every child should grow up believing that success belongs to them, that they don’t have to change who they are just to get on, that is the Britain we will fight for.

Labour will deliver opportunity for our children.

Now – I am proud of these first steps. They are a new path for our country, a plan that will turn the page, deliver stability and change. And because we have been so ruthless in making sure these policies are deliverable, fully-funded, ready to go.

We also provide the certainty that working people, businesses and communities need. A clear direction. Not the endless spinning around that successive Conservative governments have subjected our country to. The Prime Minister with a new plan every week, a new strategy every month, and at this rate – a new election campaign every day!

I’m not joking. All this spinning round and round, it’s symbolic of the chaos and the instability. You’ve seen that again over the past few days. The desperation of this national service policy – a teenage dad’s army – paid for by cancelling levelling-up funding and money from tax avoidance that we would use to invest in our NHS.

All elections are a choice and this is a clear one: levelling up and the NHS with Labour. Or more desperate chaos with the Tories. That is the choice.

But in a way this desperation tells another story and underlines how elections are about more than individual changes or policies, but about values, temperament, character and a bigger question: whose side are you on? Who do you hold in your mind’s eye when you are making decisions?

Everything I have fought for has been shaped by my life, every change I have made to this party has been about this cause, the answer to that question, the only answer, the working people of this country delivering on their aspirations, earning their respect, serving their interests.

I know those people are looking at this election, looking at me personally. So I make this promise: I will fight for you.

I took this Labour Party four and a half years ago and I changed it into the party you see today. I was criticised for some of the changes I’ve made – change is always like that, there are always people who say don’t do that, don’t go so fast – but whenever I face a fork in the road, at the Crown Prosecution Service, in my work in Northern Ireland, and especially here in the Labour Party… it always comes back to this, the golden thread: country first, Party second.

Because you cannot restore trust and respect with the politics of protest. You cannot move our country forward with gimmicks and gestures. And you cannot truly serve the country if you only do what is convenient, that is why I changed the Labour Party. That is how we serve the British people.

I see no fight in the Prime Minister. No appetite to do the same for his party. They will not change. Seriously – whenever he is confronted by factions in his party, people who are miles away from serving the values of the British people, he caves in – every time. A ‘party-first’ weakness at the heart of his leadership.

Rwanda is the perfect example. He knows it won’t work, he said that. He tried to stop it when he was Chancellor but he was too weak to stand up to his party. He caved in and now he’s gone through with it anyway it’s cost you six hundred million pounds and he’s called an election before it can be tested. Weakness upon weakness.

How do you think working people feel when the Prime Minister says we’ve turned a corner? How do you think they feel when they see the people who did that to their mortgages, swanning around in the House of Lords because he was too weak to stand up to them.

Service isn’t just a word, it requires action. You have to roll up your sleeves and change things for the better. I have changed this Labour party, dragged it back to service, and I will do exactly the same for Westminster – that is the choice at this election: Service or self-interest, stability or chaos, a Labour Party that has changed or a Tory Party that has run away from the mainstream.

The choice is yours. You can stop the chaos, you can turn the page, you can join with us, and together we can rebuild our country.

Thank you.