Marking the final full day of this year’s Labour Party Conference, Starmer’s speech had crowds queuing for hours. Set to start at 2pm, queues started forming around 11.30am, really taking shape around 12.30, wrapping around the exhibition hall and spilling out into the foyer an hour before anybody would even be let in. Today marked Keir’s fifth speech as party leader, taking place every year since his first in 2020, which was delivered socially distanced in an arts centre in Doncaster, followed by Brighton in 2021, and Liverpool for the remaining three.
Following some rather dramatic introduction music, and another version of a ‘change’ video, which have been used to introduce all major speakers this week, the PM took to the stage, grinning with joy, ready to deliver his first speech as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
From the off, Starmer reminded conference that “change has begun”, reeling off everything that Labour have achieved, and are on their way to achieving so far. He pledged to introduce the Hillsborough law to parliament before the anniversary of the disaster next April, and emphasised his goal of “putting politics back in the service of working people”. Echoing Reeve’s remarks from yesterday, Starmer made it clear that “service doesn’t mean we’ll get everything right, [it] doesn’t mean everyone will agree” but affirmed his belief that “the British people want, and need, the mandate that [they] have won”.
The last few days have been rife with speculation as to whether the PM would address recent donation controversy in his speech today, in a bid to calm the media’s scrutiny and halt it in it’s tracks. At the podium today, Starmer claimed that “the bad faith advice from people who still hanker for the politics of noisy performance” is “water off a ducks back, mere glitter off a shirt cuff”, a gentle nod to last year’s glitter-filled stage invasion which gave way to Labour To Win’s slogan of ‘Sparkle With Starmer’; “It has never distracted me, it won’t distract me now”, he affirmed. Only time will tell whether this has been successful in moving the narrative away from ‘donor-gate’.
The PM moved his speech on to Labour’s place internationally, and, to the excitement of the audience, called unwaveringly for “restraint and de-escalation on the border of Lebanon and Israel”, as well as an “immediate ceasefire in Gaza” and “a recognised Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel”. The PM committed to standing by these stances over the next few days at the UN General Assembly.
If you thought his speech would go off without a hitch today, think again! After being interrupted by a heckler, Starmer joked, “his pass must be from the 2019 conference”, again reiterating that Labour are no longer the “party of protest” and have “changed”. Catching up with Ellie Reeves MP after the speech, we asked her whether she thought refusing to engage with protestors undermined democracy, she told us that “Labour suffered one of it’s worst defeats” in 2019, and that the party are committed to a “country first party second” mentality. She also said that Starmer should “have the right” to make his conference speech “without interruption”.
Other key moments from his speech included a commitment to housing veterans, affirmation of the right to access to cultural capital, and “no return to Tory austerity”.
If you want to catch up on the key moments from the PM’s speech, our live coverage is available on X/Twitter.
