Labour leader Keir Starmer was covered in glitter and heckled by an angry protestor as he began addressing Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool on Wednesday.
In an incident that will raise major questions about the security arrangements for the leader of the U.K. opposition, a man rushed the main conference stage, shouted and poured glitter all over Starmer before being bundled off stage.
As the protestor was wrestled to the ground, he shouted: “True democracy is citizen led. Politics needs an update. We demand a people’s house. We demand a people’s house. We are in crisis, we are in crisis.”
Starmer — on course to become Britain’s next leader based on current polling — shrugged off the incident, removing his jacket and rolling up his shirt sleeves, before quipping: “Protest not power; that’s why we changed our party conference.”
And he said of the protestor: “If he thinks that bothers me, he doesn’t know me.”
The incident marks the latest time Starmer — who has moved his left-wing party to the perceived political center ground — has been interrupted by protestors. An education speech the Labour leader delivered in July was disrupted by climate activists.
Then-Prime Minister Theresa May saw her own 2017 Conservative Party conference speech interrupted by a comedian handing her a fake P45, a form of document given to fired British workers.