Britain faces a “defining choice” between a patriotic Labour party promising national renewal or “division and decline” under the “snake oil merchant” Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer has said.
Speaking at the Labour party’s conference in Liverpool, the prime minister said he was engaged in a “fight of the soul of our country” with the Reform UK leader, who “doesn’t like Britain”.
He suggested that established politicians bore some responsibility for Farage’s rise, saying they had “placed too much faith in globalisation” and that Labour had “become a party that patronised working people”.
Starmer addressed the party grassroots on Tuesday after a bruising month dominated by questions over his political judgment and deepening unpopularity.
Seeking to unite his fractured base, he argued that voters had “reasonable” concerns about illegal migration but that there was “a moral line” that Farage and others had crossed.
The prime minister vowed to “fight” anyone who argued that people who were not white could not be English or British and that families who had lived in the UK for generations should be deported, saying they were “an enemy of national renewal”.
“If you incite racist violence and hatred, that is not expressing concern: it’s criminal. This party – this great party – is proud of our flags, yet if they are painted alongside graffiti, telling a Chinese takeaway owner to ‘go home’, that’s not pride; that’s racism,” he told activists to loud applause.
“If you say or imply that people cannot be English or British because of the colour of their skin, that mixed-heritage families owe you an explanation, that people who have lived here for generations, raised their children here, built 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 an enemy of national renewal.”
He said that against the surging popularity of Farage’s Reform UK, Labour was in “a fight for the soul of our country every bit as big as rebuilding Britain after the war”.
“We can all see that the country faces a choice, a defining choice, Britain stands at a fork in the road, we can choose decency, we can choose division, renewal or decline,” he said, adding that Farage “doesn’t like Britain, doesn’t believe in Britain” and wanted to create “a competition of victims”.
He added: “Let us spell it out: controlling migration is a reasonable goal, but if you throw bricks and smash up private property that’s not legitimate, that is thuggery.
“We will crack down on illegal working, we will remove people with no right to be here and we will secure Britain’s borders. But there is a line, a moral line – and it isn’t just Farage who crosses it, there are also people who should know better sowing fear and discord across our country.”
The prime minister’s remarks marked a change of tone from his “island of strangers” speech in May that sparked uproar from Labour MPs, who said his rhetoric echoed Enoch Powell. Starmer said later he “deeply regretted” using the phrase.
He also sought to strike a more optimistic tone about the state of the country on Tuesday than he did in opposition and the first months in government.
“I just do not accept that Britain is broken. There are so many opportunities to make a difference,” he told activists, citing energy and infrastructure investments around the UK and trade deals with countries including the US and India. “Is that broken Britain?” he asked repeatedly.
His remarks were a tacit admission that Labour ministers were too gloomy about the UK after entering office. In a press conference two days after becoming prime minister, Starmer declared that public services including the NHS and prisons were “broken” and that he “can’t pretend we can fix everything overnight”.
The following month, speaking from the Downing Street rose garden, Starmer said “things are worse than we ever imagined” and that “we have not just inherited an economic black hole, but a societal black hole”.
Farage took aim at Starmer for calling his immigration policy racist in a live broadcast on Tuesday afternoon, where he said the prime minister’s intervention “directly threatens the safety” of Reform UK campaigners and was an “absolute disgrace” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder.
Farage accused Starmer of calling all Reform supporters racist “by implication” and said he was unfit to govern. David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, told the BBC that Farage “has got a bit of a brass neck”.
Seeking to position Labour as the agent of change in his speech, Starmer said: “We must never, ever find ourselves defending a status quo that manifestly failed working people.”
He said successive governments had “placed too much faith in globalisation”, including with “lazy assumptions that immigration is all we need to give us workers … it doesn’t matter if industry leaves, it doesn’t matter if we don’t train our young people, it doesn’t matter if wealth creation is hoarded by just a few communities”.
Preparing the ground for unpopular announcements in the November budget, Starmer warned party members that being in government “requires decisions that are not cost-free or easy, decisions that are not always comfortable for our party”.
He criticised “snake oil merchants” on the right and on the left who sought to convince the public there was a “quick fix” to all of Britain’s problems. He cited calls for unfunded tax cuts, “a wealth tax that somehow solves every problem” and the Brexit campaign’s promises that leaving the EU would bring £350m more a week to the NHS.
In an echo of Gordon Brown’s 2009 conference speech, Starmer listed his government’s achievements, including nationalising British Steel, banning fire-and-rehire practices and zero-hours contracts, introducing stronger protections for renters, rebuilding schools and extending free school meals.
He announced that he would scrap the New Labour target of having 50% of young people go to university and replace it with an aim of two-thirds doing either a degree or a “gold standard apprenticeship”.
He said Britain needed a “more muscular state” freed from unnecessary red tape, as well as investment outside London and the south-east, more money for public services and strengthened workers’ rights.
In the days leading up to conference, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, criticised Starmer’s leadership and economic policy and said Labour MPs had been urging him to mount a leadership challenge.
But during a live Guardian podcast recording on Monday, Burnham appeared to retreat from the threat of a leadership challenge, saying he thought Starmer was the right man for the job.
Starmer was introduced at conference by Margaret Aspinall, a campaigner for justice for victims of the Hillsborough disaster, who welcomed a long-awaited law that will force public officials to tell the truth during investigations into major disasters.
“I’ve met a prime minister who’s kept his promise,” she said. Details of the legislation, unveiled earlier this month, have been welcomed by campaigners who feared it would be watered down.
