Keir Starmer Says Nigel Farage "Doesn't Like Britain"
Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave his leader's speech at Labour conference on Tuesday afternoon (Alamy)
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Prime Minister Keir Starmer doubled down on his attacks on Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, saying that Farage “doesn’t like Britain”.
Starmer delivered his leaders’ speech to the Labour Party Conference on Tuesday afternoon, and was introduced to the stage by Margaret Aspinall, a campaigner for the Hillsborough Law.
The Prime Minister's speech repeatedly made reference to “national renewal”, and he said that Britain faces a choice between “decency or division” and “renewal or decline”.
His comments echoed the speech he made at the Global Progress Action summit last week, where he said centre-left politics was not "dying out" and condemned populism on the right.
"When was the last time you heard Nigel Farage say anything positive about Britain's future? He can't,” he said.
"He doesn't like Britain, doesn't believe in Britain, wants you to doubt it as much as he does and so he resorts to grievance. They all do."
Starmer said that the UK is a “great country” and accused Farage of wanting to turn it into a "competition of victims".
Asking the room whether they thought Reform actually love the country, Starmer was met with shouts of “no!”
He described a "moral line" when it comes to immigration, and said that while it was reasonable for people want secure borders, throwing bricks and smashing up private property was "thuggery" and "racism", not legitimate protest.
MPs and delegates in the conference hall were given flags of the British nations to wave, and Starmer ended the speech by telling the conference to “fly those flags”.
Starmer received particularly loud applause when he condemned racism, referred to the UK government’s recognition of Palestinian statehood, and declared that Labour is a “patriotic party”.
In response to Starmer's speech, Farage said that "by implication", the Prime Minister had suggested that "Reform supporters, voters and sympathisers are racist too", and that this was a "very low blow".
"This language will incite the radical left," he said in a livestream on X.
"It directly threatens the safety of our elected officials and campaigners."
The Prime Minister announced that the government would move away from the target of 50 per cent of young people going to university, and work towards a new target for two thirds of young people to get higher level skills through university, further education, or a gold standard apprenticeship by the age of 25.
Starmer also criticised calls for a wealth tax that “would magically solve every problem”, and referred to “snake-oil merchants on the right and the left” for whom “decline is good for their business”.
Hitting out at politicians who had supported leaving the EU – including Farage – Starmer said that he had "had enough" of figures who had "lied to this country, unleashed chaos and walked away after Brexit".
He said that the UK had “placed too much faith in globalisation” after the financial crash of 2008, and that the state had been “complacent” in the years since.
“We all have a responsibility to change our country,” Starmer said, and admitted that Labour had previously become “a party that patronised working people".
"That is why we changed the party”.
