The Guardian view on Sir Keir Starmer’s speech: rightly questioned 13 years of decline | Editorial
Sir Keir Starmer’s conference speech began with the Labour leader doused with glitter. But delegates thought he sparkled, with rapturous applause as his oration reached its climax. Sir Keir dared the party in the hall to disagree with him by praising the achievements of New Labour, vowing reform of public services and leading a standing ovation for Israel. No one did. Labour has been traumatised by the power struggles of the last few years, and the last thing on members’ minds was to disrupt the address of the man who, if the polls are to be believed, will be Britain’s next prime minister.
His speech was also quietly ambitious: Sir Keir has still to win a general election, yet he talked of “a decade of national renewal” that would require two victories. The Labour leader hit the right note in promising to improve Britain’s schools and hospitals by taxing the wealthy. His pledge to raise workers’ pay is welcome, as was Labour doubling down on pro-green plans in the wake of Tory attacks and the Conservatives’s troubling descent into conspiracy theories over net zero. What Sir Keir offered, more subtly, was a vision of an ordered society, one where the NHS worked so that patients didn’t need to crowdfund to pay for urgent operations, “crime is prosecuted” and people were paid enough to afford “the little things we love”.
People from all over the country, he said, and from all walks of life, need to unite against sewage pumpers, rip-off energy firms, Tory party cronies and those who partied in Westminster only to mock the cleaners who scrubbed their “mess off the walls” during Covid. Sir Keir’s us-versus-them rhetoric – with the Conservative party as the “dangerous” face of 13 years of failure – will strike a chord.
Labour will face opposition from within and without. On Monday, trade unions won a conference vote to nationalise the energy industry against the leadership’s wishes. The ballot may be ignored. But last year, Sir Keir disregarded a vote backing proportional representation, an issue that lay behind the glitter-throwing protest. He would do better to reflect on whether he wants to fight friends as well as enemies. The ranks of the latter will swell – as his promise to build more new towns will undoubtedly reveal.
What was missing from the Labour leader’s speech was bolder economic policies. This undermines his good intentions. Sir Keir’s mission for growth, rooted in a new devolution agenda, is the right call. For the past 15 years, south-east England has seen an upward spiral of rising investment, rising productivity and rising growth. Much of the rest of the country, by contrast, has suffered a downward vortex. To bring about the required convergence calls for cash to grow regions with weaker economies. Seen from this perspective, cancelling HS2 is not a break with the past but a continuation of it.
By emphasising reform over spending to reduce regional inequalities, Sir Keir risks Labour being seen as a party with the right questions but not the right answers. The claim that growth will pay for public services is believable if the former can be generated quickly. That seems debatable. However, the Labour leader still has time to unveil fresh policies. His conference speech represented a different and more hopeful vision for Britain’s future – and a different approach to politics – than that of an exhausted, divided government.