Starmer says there is another path on offer.
We can call it the path of decline. But in truth, it leads to ruin, to chaos, to Britain being poorer in every sense.
And it’s a tempting path, because it asks nothing of people, makes no demands, suggests no difficulties.
All you need to do is listen to politicians who tell you there’s a quick fix, a miracle cure, tax cuts that magically pay for themselves, a wealth tax that somehow solves every problem, Brexit lies on the side of that bus.
He says Nigel Farage is just offering grievance.
Think about it. When was the last time that you heard Nigel Farage say anything positive about Britain’s future?
He can’t. He doesn’t like Britain, doesn’t believe in Britain, wants you to doubt it …
He resorts to grievance. They all do. They want to turn this country, this proud, self-reliant country, into a competition of victims, saying to you, to working people, don’t trust in each other, you can’t fix this, this is not a great country.
But it is, conference. It is a great country.
Key events
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Labour says new two-thirds university/apprenticeship target part of plan to make further education world-class
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Farage claims Reform UK campaigners now at risk from ‘radical left’ due to Starmer’s comments
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Starmer’s speech – snap verdict
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Starmer says claim Britain too divided to be a community ‘goes against everything I stand for’
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Starmer rejects claims Britain is broken
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Starmer says Reform UK’s migration plan makes it ‘enemy of national renewal’
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Starmer suggests some flag-painting has crossed line into racism
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Starmer says Labour had to change because it had become ‘a party that patronised working people’
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Flags ‘belong to all of us’, says Starmer
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Starmer says two-thirds of children getting degree or gold-standard apprenticeship to replace 50% university target
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Starmer says government policies ’tilt toward working people’, and he makes no apologies for that
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Starmer restates his belief growth is ‘defining mission of this government’
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Starmer says Labour should never be ‘defending status quo that failed working people’
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Starmer welcomes US peace initiative for Gaza
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Britain faces ‘fork in road’, Starmer says
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Starmer says injustice will have ‘no place to hide’ when Hillsborough law passed
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Hillsborough campaigner Margaret Aspinall pays tribute to Starmer as ‘a PM who’s kept his promise’
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Extracts from Starmer’s speech released in advance
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Lucy Powell criticises Bridget Phillipson over tweet, and says she would offer ‘course correction’ as deputy leader
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Darren Jones says Farage misleads people and takes them down ‘dark path’, like Andrew Tate
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Starmer to use conference speech to suggest Nigel Farage does not love Britain
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Streeting’s speech to Labour conference – summary of key points
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Streeting attacks Farage for ‘post-truth politics’, calling him ‘snake-oil salesman of British politics’
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Poll suggests Burnham more popular than Starmer, but that this would make little difference in contest against Farage
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Heidi Alexander says she’s ‘fully committed’ to Northern Powerhouse Rail – but defends taking time to get it right
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Benn tells activists to ‘be of good heart and good cheer’, saying past Labour governments have got through ‘tough times’ too
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Farage’s plan to leave ECHR would undermine Good Friday agreement, Hilary Benn says
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Unison welcomes £500m commitment to fair pay agreement for care workers, but says ‘substantially more’ needed
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Tony Blair’s record in Northern Ireland shows he could play positive role in Gaza, says Streeting
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As Starmer offers ‘patriotic renewal’, Ed Balls says ‘I’ve no idea what that means’
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Labour delegates urged to be ‘vigilant’ about possible disruption ahead of Starmer’s speech
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Streeting hits out at BMA, saying if it continues to block Labour NHS reforms, it could let in Reform UK
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Streeting says NHS body that issued advice saying first-cousin marriages have some benefits was wrong and should apologise
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‘Farage says go home, I say you are home’ – Streeting praises foreign health staff as he calls Reform UK ‘disaster’ for NHS
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Starmer says ‘NHS Online’ for more virtual hospital appointments shows how Labour is delivering ‘national renewal’
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Wes Streeting rejects reports that Reeves will impose VAT on private healthcare in budget
Mainstream, the new centre-left Labour group which Andy Burnham is supporting, has put out this statement about Keir Starmer’s speech. Luke Hurst, its national coordinator, said:
If you are going to build up Reform so much as the enemy, then you have to be certain you can deliver on economic growth and public service change to knock them down. Even after today’s speech, it’s unclear that Labour has thought through how to really transform the country.
Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, has welcomed the speech. He said:
The prime minister was right. For too long the economy has been stacked against working people. It’s time to turn the page.
From here on, every announcement, every press release, every speech must show working people and their families that the government is on their side and building a fairer future.
And Christine McAnea, the Unison general secretary, said Keir Starmer needed to follow up his speech with action.
Politicians who thrive on division and don’t offer anything positive have no answers on how to get the UK back on its feet. Patriotism is never an excuse for racism or attacking others.
Keir Starmer made all the right noises about rebuilding the NHS, tackling the cost-of-living crisis and boosting opportunities for young people. But the public needs to see this in action.
Labour says new two-thirds university/apprenticeship target part of plan to make further education world-class
Labour has sent out a news release with a bit more detail about the target Keir Starmer announced in his speech for two-thirds of young people to go to university, or to get a gold-standard apprenticeship. It says:
The prime minister set out his plan to build a world-class further education system that will unlock opportunity across the UK.
At the heart of the prime minister’s reforms is a decision to scrap the ambition for 50% of young people to go to university. Starmer replaced this with a new target: for two-thirds of young people to get higher skills, either through university, further education or taking on a gold standard apprenticeship. This target will include at least 10% of young people pursuing higher technical education or apprenticeships that the economy needs by 2040, a near-doubling of today’s figure.
In his speech, the prime minister highlighted how these changes will not only help to build a Britain fit for the future, but will mean that technical qualifications, undervalued and overlooked by previous Conservative governments, are afforded the same respect as university degrees …
Forming part of the government’s programme of national renewal, these changes will be underpinned by a drive to raise standards. There will be higher quality teaching in colleges and 14 new technical excellence colleges to equip young people with the technical qualifications or apprenticeships that our economy needs.
To support these reforms, the government will also invest nearly £800m extra into funding for 16– to 19-year-olds next year (2026-7). Coming from the existing spending review settlement, this funding will support an additional 20,000 students and make our further education system world-class.
Labour says further details will be set out in the post-16 skills white paper.
Farage claims Reform UK campaigners now at risk from ‘radical left’ due to Starmer’s comments
Rowena Mason
Rowena Mason is the Guardian’s Whitehall editor.
Nigel Farage has vowed to “teach Labour a lesson” in elections next May, as he accused Keir Starmer of threatening the safety of Reform supporters by branding countless millions of them racist.
In a response to Starmer’s speech, the Reform UK leader claimed that Starmer saying Reform policies were racist was “inciting and encouraging” the radical left to take action against Reform officials, supporters, voters and sympathisers.
“In the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder, this is an absolute disgrace,” he said.
Starmer has said the Reform policy of abolishing settled status for migrants is racist, and warned against the party’s “politics of grievance” that divides communities. He has not said that either Farage himself or Reform supporters or voters are racist.
But Farage claimed Starmer was saying this by implication. He said:
Reform want illegal migrants deported from our country. As I speak, a further 400 have crossed the English Channel today.
Reform want the benefits system to be for UK citizens, for British citizens only, not for foreign-born nationals. Reform want foreign criminals removed from our country ASAP.
Labour says these policies are racist and immoral, and, by implication, Reform supporters, Reform voters, Reform sympathisers, are racist too.
Yes, if you think we should patrol our borders, you are, by the definition of the prime minister and his cabinet, all racists.
Now, I don’t normally worry about abuse being thrown at me. I’ve got kind of used to it over the course of the last few years, but to accuse countless millions of being racist is a very, very low blow.
Why? Well, this language will incite and encourage the radical left. I’m thinking of Antifa and other organisations like that. It directly threatens the safety of our elected officials and our campaigners, and, frankly, in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder, I think this is an absolute disgrace.
Starmer’s speech – snap verdict
Sometimes a leader needs to use a big speech to explain who they are, sometimes it is about explaining what they will do, but this was a speech where Keir Starmer set out to tell the nation what he believes. And, in immediate terms, it was a success. After a rather rambling and unfocused start, and a brief passage where the speech lost momentum, Starmer suddenly hit his stride halfway through, when he finally hit out at divisive, quasi-racist populism and spoke up for patriotic, mainstream inclusiveness.
It was a response to six months or more of politics driven by Nigel Farage and Reform UK stoking up concerns about illegal immigration, and all immigration, protests outside asylum hotels and flag mania – taking the public debate to levels of toxicity not seen since in the UK since Enoch Powell.
Many progressives despaired at Labour’s apparent cringe towards this, and Starmer’s reluctance to take it on. For weeks No 10 said little or nothing as ethno-nationalism took hold. Now, at last, Starmer has firmly taken a side.
Quite how willing to sustain this remains to be seen. Some on the left argue that Starmer can’t credibly call out the sinister undercurrent of Reform UK when his own home secretary also wants to limit access to indefinite leave to remain. And, of course, Starmer should probably have been saying much of this six months ago. But Labour MPs now have a script to use against Farage. That won’t quell all the concerns about Starmer’s leadership, but no single speech ever does, and this one should buy him credit.
It was not a speech with much policy (a potential drawback). But, where there was policy (see 2.40pm and 2.44pm), it had a strong, working-class tilt. Starmer talked about “working people” rather than working class, but it was clear what he meant. He leads what is described as the most working-class cabinet in history, but has in the past been a bit squeamish about sounding overtly classist. Not so much now. This was another example of how this was a speech about definition, and it should help him in the fight against Nigel Farage, described by Labour as being allied to far-right, global billionaires.
Earlier this year, Starmer gave a speech in which he said there was a risk of Britain becoming “an island of strangers” because of immigration. He later said the passage, which loosely echoed a phrase in the Rivers of Blood speech, was a mistake. Today, in his peroration (see 3.14pm), he repudiated that line entirely, saying the notion that Britain could never be a community “goes against everything I stand for, everything I observe, everything I understand about this great country that I love”. It took a while for the full correction to come, but when it did, this afternoon, it sounded authentic.
Starmer says claim Britain too divided to be a community ‘goes against everything I stand for’
Starmer says everyone has a responsibility to rebuild Britain.
There are limits to what the state can do on its own. In the end, we really are all in it together.
You will never hear that from the politicians with grievance, the attraction of unity. That’s something they will never understand. They will never hold out their hand, as I do now, to people who may see the world differently …
So if you are a patriot, whether you vote Labour or not, if you want to stand against grievance and renew Britain, then this is your fight too.
Because even in a world this dangerous, I do think the politics of grievance is the biggest threat we face because it attacks who we are, an attempt to turn us into a place where we look at our neighbours in our community, people who may or may not look different to us and we no longer see them as fellow partners in the project of Britain.
Starmer finally mentions the Tories. “Do you remember them?” He says he does not know if they believe in the politics of grievance, but they did not stand up for people when they were in office.
And here is the peroration.
People say, people say, conference that a nation like ours can’t be a community, that it’s too diverse, too divided.
I reject that. That goes against everything I stand for, everything I observe, everything I understand about this great country that I love.
So no matter how many people tell me that it can’t be done, I believe Britain can come together, that we can pursue a shared destination, that we can unite around the common good.
That is my ambition, the purpose of this government: end decline, reform our public services, grow our economy from the grassroots and with resolve, with respect, with a flag in our hands, we will renew this country until we can say with total conviction that Britain is built for all.
Starmer rejects claims Britain is broken
And Starmer says he does not accept that Britain is broken.
There are so many opportunities to make a difference. The energy of the future. We’re backing it. Carbon capture here in Merseyside, the Celtic Freeport in South Wales, offshore wind turbines made and built in Humberside, brilliant scientists in the heart of middle England developing nuclear fusion. Is that broken Britain, conference?
Look at the investment tech companies queueing up to back this country, saying that we are indispensable for the AI future. Now, those companies can invest anywhere in the world, but they’re choosing us. They’re choosing Hartlepool, Warrington, Belfast, East Midlands. Is that broken Britain?
Those free trade deals we struck with India, with the US, with our fellow Europeans, a signal to the world that Britain is back, that stability is returned. Is that broken Britain, conference?
Or our ironclad, never-wavering support for the brave people of Ukraine, the yellow and blue flag flying on churches and booth halls the length and front of the cup. Is that broken Britain, conference?
Starmer runs through a series of other examples, mentioning volunteers, including the person who scrubbed off that racist graffiti in York.
Starmer talks about the need for renewal in the NHS, and he confirms the plans for NHS Online. (See 8.48am.)
Starmer says Reform UK’s migration plan makes it ‘enemy of national renewal’
Starmer goes on to attack the Reform UK plan to get rid of indefinite leave to remain.
And, conference, if you say or imply that people cannot be English or British because of the colour of their skin … that the people who have lived here for generations, raised their children here, build their lives here, working in our schools, our hospitals, running businesses, our neighbours, if you say they should now be deported, then mark my words – we will fight you with everything we have, because you are the enemy of national renewal.
Starmer suggests some flag-painting has crossed line into racism
Starmer says it is wrong to think Labour can ignore people’s concerns about the asylum system.
People are compassionate, but they want secure borders, he says.
The government is determined to stop the people-smuggling gangs, he says.
But there is a line the government won’t cross.
And it isn’t just Farage who crosses it. There are also people who should know better, sowing fear and discord across our country.
And then when we call it out, they pretend that we’re criticising reasonable concerns about immigration.
We have seen that trick, conference.
So let us spell it out once and for all. Controlling migration is a reasonable goal, but if you throw bricks and smash up private property, that’s not legitimate.
Free speech is a British value, and we have guarded it for centuries. But if you incite racist violence and hatred that is not expressing concern, it’s criminal.
This great party is proud of our flags. Yet if they’re painted alongside graffiti telling a Chinese takeaway owner to go home, that’s not pride. That’s racism.
Starmer says Labour had to change because it had become ‘a party that patronised working people’
Starmer recalls a visit to Oldham when he was a young MP when a woman showed him photographs of her attending an Asian neighbour’s wedding. Eventually he worked out she was doing that because she wanted to show she was not racist, before she raised concerns with him.
What was really happening is that she an ordinary working-class woman from Oldham, a Labour voter, felt that she had to prove to a Labour politician that she wasn’t racist before she could even bring up the issues in her community.
I’ve carried that with me through all the bad years, conference.
Whatever our intentions, we had become a party that patronised working people, and that is why we changed the party.
Starmer questions whether Nigel Farage loves the UK.
For me, patriotism is about love and pride, about serving an interest that is more than yourself, a common good.
And the question I ask seriously of Nigel Farage and Reform is, do they love our country? Do they want to serve our country, all of it, our beautiful, tolerant, diverse country, every region, nation and city?
Or do they just want to stir the pot of division because that’s worked in their interests?
Flags ‘belong to all of us’, says Starmer
Starmer recalls the England match at Wembley in 1996. He goes on:
I’m not going to pretend I would enjoy it if England lost to Scotland or Wales. The union does have some limits, but I can say I’m not just proud of the union jack and the cross of St George. I’m also proud of the saltire, of the red dragon, proud of our union, the astonishing relationship between our four great nations, four different nations.
Yes, the four nations that time and again, have been through fire together, built so much together, a country forged by the solidarity of working people.
So let’s fly all [flags], conference, because they’re our flags. They belong to all of us, and we will never surrender them.
Let us unite our country behind them, because this is no time for dividers. This is the time for bringing the whole country together.
That is how we will fight next year’s elections – as patriots of our great nations.
Starmer says further education will be a defining cause for the government.
And he pivots from that to attack Reform UK again.
That’s what I stand for, conference.
And let me tell you what I stand against, and I have had enough of lectures from self-appointed champions of working people who want to shred our public services, level down workers’ rights, crash the economy like Liz Truss, politicians who lied to this country, unleashed chaos and walked away after Brexit, who equivocate [about] Putin in Ukraine, who even now go to America and run around for money talking this great country down.
Starmer says two-thirds of children getting degree or gold-standard apprenticeship to replace 50% university target
Starmer talks about going to university from a working-class background. And he talks about how people like his brother, who had learning difficulties, were left behind.
He says he wants everyone to be respected. He goes on.
I don’t think the way we currently measure success in education, that ambition to get 50% of kids to uni, I don’t think that’s right for our times.
He says he will end that aim.
If you’re a kid or a parent of a kid who chooses an apprenticeship, what does it say to you? Do we genuinely, as a country, afford them the same respect? Because we should …
So, conference, today, I can announce we will scrap that target and replace it with a new ambition that two-thirds of our children should go either to university or take a gold-standard apprenticeship.
Starmer says government policies ’tilt toward working people’, and he makes no apologies for that
Starmer is now talking about the extension of childcare.
The last government neglected this, he says. That meant inequality was “baked in for life”.
So our childcare provision is a gamechanger, giving every child the best start in life, every single child equal at the starting line of their education.
Starmer says that is why he made this decision.
That’s why we made the tough decisions. And I make no apologies if they tilt towards working people, because it’s working people who paid the price of Tory decline.
Starmer is now speeding up.
That is why we invested in our NHS. Fired up Great British Energy. Stood up for British Steel, new protections for renters, sick pay for the less well-off, fire and rehire finished, zero-hours contract scrapped, investment in Scotland and Wales, rebuilding our schools, new homes, new towns … and a proper living wage, for us the culmination of a long journey for our movement … extending free school meals, 100,000 children lifted out of poverty, the first step, the first step on our journey to end child poverty.
This gets a standing ovation.
Starmer turns to the Norwegian ship deal.
Just look at the new deal to build Norwegian frigates. That doesn’t happen without our investment – a decade of shipbuilding on the Clyde.
That heritage, that pride secure for future generations.
Now, those frigates could have been built anywhere, but that was the old mentality that it didn’t matter. But we want to build them here in Britain.
Starmer says he went to the shipyard and told them they had won the order against competition from around the world. They were proud, he says.
Starmer says the government asked a lot of business at the last budget.
This has allowed the government to start the process of renewal, he says.
He says the defence investment is good for growth. But it was “impossible without really difficult decisions on aid”.
