RED TORY
Starmer writes off post-Blair Labour as he pitches to Tory voters



Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer gives a keynote speech marking the four-year anniversary of the 2019 election, at Silverstone Technology Park, near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Picture date: Tuesday December 12, 2023.

SIR KEIR STARMER has been condemned for insulting a generation of Labour activists as he wrote off the party’s post-Blair history today.

Making a speech to mark the fourth anniversary of the 2019 general election defeat, Sir Keir claimed Labour had lost its way even before the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, which he routinely denounces.

“Working people up and down the country looked at how we’d lost our way, not just under Jeremy Corbyn, but for a while, and they said ‘no’,” he said.

He claimed that Labour under his predecessors had “reneged on our old partnership, the Labour bargain that we serve working people as they drive the country forward.”

Left campaign group Momentum responded that the Labour leader’s speech was “an insult to Labour members who gave it all to change the country for the better.”

It added that Sir Keir was peddling a “disingenuous analysis which equates conformity with service and Labour values with indulgence.”

Sir Keir’s “wasted years” analysis not only overlooked the 2017 general election, which saw Labour’s highest vote this century but may as well never have happened for the party’s right wing, it also put the spotlight on the preceding years of Ed Miliband’s leadership.

Mr Miliband led Labour to heavy defeat in 2015 and is also despised by Labour’s Blairites, yet he continues to serve in Sir Keir’s shadow cabinet, holding down the climate change portfolio.

Sir Keir claimed today that no slight was intended by his remarks: “Ed Miliband’s a very good member of my shadow cabinet on a very important brief.

“But as a party, we drifted too far from the core function of serving working people.”

His speech confirmed the conservative turn he has imposed on the “changed” Labour Party.

He claimed that it had “broken new ground in our relationship with business” and “gets the value of private enterprise.”

Sir Keir reiterated his support for strict public spending controls and said that “economic stability is the foundation for everything.”

He also attacked the Tories for permitting high immigration after Brexit, which he acknowledged was “a vote for change.”

Sir Keir pledged that there would be a “total crackdown on cronyism” under Labour, with “no more VIP fast lanes, no more kickbacks for colleagues, no more revolving doors between government and the companies they regulate.”