Keir Starmer speech live: Latest updates as Labour leader disrupted by left-wing hecklers

It appears that Sir Keir Starmer’s repeated use the word “tool” has not remained unnoticed by journalists at Labour conference.

The former human rights QC’s father was a toolmaker and his mother a nurse, and it seems his team has been keen to use his keynote speech to remind the electorate of his working-class roots.

In his speech, Sir Keir also said the words “mum” and “dad” 17 and 11 times respectively, and “work” 69 times.

The couple were Labour supporters and named their son after the party’s first parliamentary leader, Keir Hardie.

In his speech, Sir Keir said: “This is a big moment that demands leadership. Leadership founded on principles that have informed my life – and with which I honour where I’ve come from.

“Work. Care. Equality. Security. They’re British values. They’re the tools of my trade. And with them, I’ll go to work.”

Former Labour MP Laura Pidcock described Sir Keir Starmer’s conference speech as “quite uninspiring” and “long”.

The National Secretary of The People’s Assembly was MP for North West Durham from 2017 to December 2019.

Her comments outside the conference chamber in Brighton comes hours after she said on LBC radio that Sir Keir must offer a “credible alternative” to the working class who are facing “an intense crisis” dealing with high living costs.

Sir Keir Starmer insisted that Labour could win the next general election.

But he said the party needed to get “totally serious” about it and said: “I have loved my first full conference as leader, I’ve really loved it, but I don’t want to go through the same routine every year.

“In a few short years from now I want to be here with you talking about the difference we are making, the problems we are fixing as a Labour government.”

He said the pandemic, Brexit and the climate crisis meant this was a time of “rapid change”, but he said there were domestic issues to consider too such as work, care, equality, and security.

Sir Keir Starmer’s highlighting of some progresses made under Tony Blair’s Labour government was received with a standing ovation at the party conference.

The Labour leader had offered the Tories “a lesson in levelling up” as he discussed the Blair government’s record on introducing a minimum wage, boosting education and bringing down hospital waiting times.

Left-wing pressure group Momentum said: “Starmer’s speech identified a lot of problems but offered very few solutions.

“We all know that the NHS crisis is bad – but what will our Party do about it? We are no clearer on that than we were this morning.

“Throughout this conference members have voted overwhelmingly for transformative socialist policy – from a Green New Deal to a £15 an hour minimum wage.

“We are filling the ideas vacuum from below, and now we intend to push these policies in the Party and across the country.”

Sir Keir Starmer discussed the need for a Green New Deal, saying it “will include a climate investment pledge to put us back on track to cut the majority of emissions this decade”.

He spoke of the need to upgrade the country’s homes, attacking the Tories for scrapping inherited plans to make every new home zero-carbon.

“We have the least energy-efficient housing in Europe,” Sir Keir said. “So it will be Labour’s national mission over the next decade to fit out every home that needs it. To make sure that it is warm and well-insulated and costs less to heat. And we’ll create thousands of jobs in the process.”

He added: “Everything we do in government will have to meet a net-zero test, to ensure the prosperity we enjoy does not come at the cost of our climate.”

Referring back to a study suggesting why Britain was home to the first industrial revolution, Sir Keir said the government of the day “tended to favour the new over the old, enterprise over conservatism – it spread the rewards evenly”.

“The most important factor of all, the lesson we need to re-learn, was that Britain led the world in the technology of the day.

He added: “In textiles, iron, energy and power Britain was a pioneer. I know that with Labour we can do that again but every day we waste with a government with no industrial strategy we fall further behind.

“A scientific revolution is happening behind us, but if we don’t have a government ready to remake the nation, the opportunity will pass us by.”

Citing Labour’s “buy, make and sell in Britain” programme, he added: The towns that were the crucibles of the original industrial revolution need to be revived in the next.”

Our political sketch writer Tom Peck shines some light on why people are holding up red cards during the speech.

Sir Keir Starmer said: “The future of the NHS can’t just be about chasing extra demand with more money, and neither can it be about reshuffling the furniture in yet another pointless re-organisation. We have to understand the big moment that the NHS faces.”

Citing the vast rise in life expectancy as a “wonderful achievement”, he said it is also “the biggest test in the history of our NHS.

“No society in British history has been as old as our modern nation. Small politics will no longer do. I want Britain to be the healthiest nation on Earth.”

Labour would shift the priority of the NHS away from emergency care towards prevention, he said.

Sir Keir Starmer took aim at Boris Johnson’s plans for social care.

Describing the situation in care homes as “the great scandal of the pandemic”, he said: “An unfair tax hike that doesn’t fix social care and doesn’t clear the NHS backlog is not a plan.

“We know that people will still be forced to sell their homes for care, working people will have to pay more, but there’s still no plan.

“A plan would prevent problems before they bite. A plan would provide care at home, where people are. A plan would ensure the workforce was properly valued. And a serious plan wouldn’t be funded by hammering working people.”