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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Labour conference: Starmer vows green new deal, skilled jobs revival and says UK needs plan to ‘make Brexit work’ – as it happened

Afternoon summary

Here is an extract from Richard’s article.

Starmer is a leader of integrity and substance, pitted against a PM he has called a “trickster”. This is potentially a compelling juxtaposition, but there is a risk for him that most voters will note only a troubled party compared with the deceptively united front on display at the Conservatives’ conference next week.

Here is an extract from Toynbee’s.

Few but political obsessives notice conference speeches, but messages percolate out over time. By mysterious osmosis people will know Starmer better after this week, and they’ll be a step closer to envisaging an alternative prime minister: the longer chaos reigns around the country, the more they need one. Here begins the rebuilding of trust after Labour’s great calamity at the last election.

Here is an extract from Williams’.

Starmer is still genuinely uncomfortable talking about himself. In the early days of his leadership, those with his ear used to plead with him to show more of his background. Starmer still finds this toe curling, and though he has finally been persuaded of its necessity, he goes at it with a sincerity that is over-baked and painful to watch. “The eye on the object,” was how he repeatedly distilled his father’s craftsmanship. It was meant to mean something, but in God’s name, what? Honest, working people, staring at things; those are Labour Values.

And here is an extract from Lothian-McLean’s.

“Shouting slogans or changing lives?” was Starmer’s response to one heckler, which served only to highlight that he has yet to convincingly do either. Finishing up on yet another reference to his toolmaker father, the Labour leader walked off to a standing ovation. But only concrete action will be enough to convince the wider public that he’s a tool for their betterment, rather than just another cog in a failing political machine.

Sir Keir Starmer and his wife, Victoria, walking along the promenade in Brighton, East Sussex, before his speech.
Sir Keir Starmer and his wife, Victoria, walking along the promenade in Brighton, East Sussex, before his speech. Photograph: Leon Neal/PA

Updated

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, has welcomed the emphasis on education in Sir Keir Starmer’s speech. Whiteman said:

It is hugely welcome to hear education take such a prominent place in Keir Starmer’s speech today. Politicians of all parties need to make education a much higher priority than it has been during the pandemic.

While Labour’s messages this week will be well received by the profession, we need all political parties to nail their colours to the mast now and say how much extra funding they are prepared to invest in education over the immediate and longer term. What backs up the words?

From Dominic Casciani, the BBC’s home affairs and legal correspondent

Momentum, the pro-Corbyn Labour group, says Starmer’s speech did not offer any answers. This is from its co-chair Andrew Scattergood.

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.

Updated

And this is from Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s leader at Westminster, on the speech.

Keir Starmer’s message to Wales today was clear: ‘Labour is the party of the union.’

Muscular unionism will prevail, whatever the colour of the prime minister’s rosette.

To the 51% of Welsh Labour supporters who believe in independence, Plaid Cymru welcomes you with open arms.

Updated

Starmer 'profoundly out of touch' with Scotland, says SNP

This is from Kirsten Oswald, the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, on Sir Keir Starmer’s speech. She says Labour is “profoundly out of touch” with what is happening in Scotland.

All this speech does is prove how profoundly out of touch Keir Starmer is with what’s actually happening in Scotland.

The SNP won by a landslide in May’s election with the biggest share of the vote in the history of devolution, while under Anas Sarwar, Labour fell to their worst-ever election result in over 100 years.

Keir Starmer can complain about Brexit all he wants but the fact is that he ordered his Labour colleagues to vote for the Tory Brexit deal, which is now having disastrous consequences across the economy and society.

Labour are doomed to irrelevance for as long as they continue to side with the Tories in denying democracy in Scotland by joining forces with Boris Johnson in his Trump-like bid to defy the cast-iron democratic mandate delivered by the people of Scotland to hold an independence referendum.

Updated

The National Education Union has welcomed Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to recruit more teachers, but criticised his proposal to make Ofsted focus on failing schools. (See 9.22am.) In a statement on the speech, Mary Bousted, the NEU’s joint general secretary, said:

Currently a third of teachers leave the profession within five years, so it is right that Labour plans to increase recruitment. If, however, they are serious about also increasing opportunities for continual professional learning for those already in the profession, the plan must also address the amount and intensity of workload faced by teachers.

Unfortunately, it is Ofsted that drives unnecessary workload. There is little evidence that it accurately reflects the quality of education a school provides, and its judgments appear to be systematically biased against schools in deprived areas. Ofsted is not the agency that can drive an effective strategy for school improvement, and this discredited body needs to be replaced rather than reformed.

Updated

Sir Keir Starmer on stage with his wife, Victoria, after delivering his speech
Sir Keir Starmer on stage with his wife, Victoria, after delivering his speech. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Updated

Lord Mandelson, the former New Labour cabinet minister and Starmer ally, has told Politico the heckling was counterproductive. He said:

With every paragraph of his speech Keir sounded more and more normal and in touch with ordinary people’s lives. With every heckle from the fringe his critics sounded more marginal and lost. It was a great contrast. I am glad they were able to use me to help advertise their crankiness.

Updated

In a briefing after the speech, asked about applause for references to New Labour in Sir Keir Starmer’s speech, a party spokesman said:

I know it sometimes comes as a surprise to journalists but it not a surprise to me that, actually, the vast majority of Labour party members are very proud of what the last Labour government achieved.

If you go around to Labour party events you’ll constantly hear people being proud of what we did in government and it shows the value of winning.

Unison welcomes speech, but Unite says Starmer should be more 'angry'

Unison and Unite are the two biggest unions that support Labour, but their politics are different and, while Unison has welcomed the speech warmly, Unite is a bit more sceptical.

Christina McAnea, the Unison general secretary, said:

Keir set out a new vision for the party and a new vision for the country. With the focus on education, public services, rights at work and mental health, Labour is offering just what the country needs after 11 years of Tory mismanagement.

Communities across the UK are struggling on so many levels.

Keir’s speech shows that Labour in power could bring hope to the many families forgotten by this government.

This is a serious plan for change.

But Unite’s national officer Rob MacGregor, speaking for the union, said:

If you’re a Unite member worried about the cost of living crisis, empty petrol pumps, abhorrent fire and rehire in our workplaces and the end of furlough just hours away, there wasn’t much for you in this speech.

We needed to hear a Labour leader who is as angry as we are about the harm being done to our workers, and as determined as Unite to stand up against abusive employers. We’re clearly not there yet.

And here are some more pictures of the disruption during the speech.

Some people held up paper to indicate that Sir Keir Starmer was being shown the red card.

Delegates hold up a red cards during Starmer’s speech.
Delegates hold up a red cards during Starmer’s speech. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP

And at least one person complained about the “purge” (members being expelled from the party, normally for links to far-left organisations now banned).

A person from the audience holds a placard which says “No Purge” during Starmer’s speech.
A person from the audience holds a placard which says “No Purge” during Starmer’s speech. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Tony Danker, the CBI director general, has welcomed the speech.

The Labour party has taken an important step forward by outlining an agenda where businesses can find common ground.

Its ambitions to decarbonise the economy and build a better future for everyone through improving education are shared by business.

Lifelong learning is the bedrock of productivity, growth, and in turn, rising wages.

But Shevaun Haviland, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, has given a slightly more qualified response.

The leader of the opposition is right to focus on business conditions that would help small and medium-sized firms. Businesses will welcome the focus on digital skills, investment in R&D and the need to make Brexit work. However, despite the warm rhetoric, what firms really need are concrete, costed proposals and meaningful detail on delivery.

Updated

School leaders have given a cautious welcome to the Labour leader’s promises on education in his conference speech, but warned against plans to end tax exemptions for independent schools as a way of funding its ambitions.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said Labour was right to focus on improving the prospects for those young people who leave education without essential qualifications.

He also welcomed Labour’s pledges on ensuring there are sufficient numbers of teachers and school leaders and reforming Ofsted to focus on supporting struggling schools, though he said more detail was needed.

Barton went on, however:

We are far from convinced that Labour’s plan could be paid for by ending tax exemptions for independent schools, not least because it may result in the closure of small independent schools, displacing their pupils and the associated cost into the state system.

Overall, this plan gives the outline of a promising sense of direction but one which will obviously need to be filled in with much greater detail. We would be very happy to work with Labour on the development of its proposals by giving the perspective of leaders from all types of schools and colleges.

Updated

The Conservatives have released this response to the speech, from Oliver Dowden, the party co-chair.

As Labour’s chaotic conference comes to an end, it is clear Sir Keir Starmer’s party is more divided than ever and has no plan. Labour spent five days talking to themselves about themselves instead of to the country. From resignations in the middle of their own conference, to their union backers deserting them, to disrupting their leader’s speech, Labour are too preoccupied fighting amongst themselves to put forward a plan for our country. Only the Conservatives are getting on with the job to build back better.

Updated

A delegate heckling Keir Starmer during his speech.
A delegate heckling Keir Starmer during his speech.
 Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

And here’s an extract from Stephen Bush’s take for the New Statesman:

This was a speech that showed both Starmer’s familiar strengths (that big political argument, whatever you think of its merits, is coherent, while his efforts to demonstrate change from the Corbyn era are likewise, coherent whatever you make of their merits). He did a good job of dispelling doubts about his ability to deliver a big conference speech and the address did a good job of casting his steadiness and lack of flash as strengths, not shortcomings. But the speech also showed his familiar weaknesses: too many announcements, denied their moment to shine, announced with seemingly no thought as to how they fit into the party’s big political dividing lines.

Updated

Starmer's speech – verdict from Twitter commentariat

Here is a roundup of what some of the most prominent journalists are saying about Sir Keir Starmer’s speech on Twitter. Generally, they are very positive.

From my colleague Gaby Hinsliff

From the FT’s Sebastian Payne

From my colleague Owen Jones

From Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall

From the Daily Mirror’s Pippa Crerar

From the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope

From the Spectator’s James Forsyth

From the Manchester Evening News’ Jennifer Williams

From ITV’s Paul Brand

From the Liverpool Echo’s Liam Thorp

From the Independent’s John Rentoul

From the Observer’s Sonia Sodha

From the Mail’s Jack Maidment

From the Observer’s Michael Savage

Updated

From the Times’ Eleni Courea

Starmer's speech - snap verdict

Sir Keir Starmer saw off the hecklers skilfully while he was delivering his speech and, now that it over, it will probably silence some of his critics too - at least for a while. The Labour left, of course, are lost for good. But there probably are enough positives in this speech to satisfy those in the party prepared to give him a bit more time to persuade the public that he would make a better prime minister than Boris Johnson.

It was a bit long but, apart from a passage in the middle where it drifted, it was unusually well crafted. It may not be one of the great conference speeches talked about a decade on - Neil Kinnock in 1985, Tony Blair and clause 4, David Cameron and the three letters that defined him, NHS - but it was definitely much better than these things normally are, blending Harold Wilson and Blair.

The best bits of the speech were the personal passages. Starmer has talked about his father and his mother often before, but the section about his mother in hospital was particularly moving, and in talking about his father, he conveyed more clearly than he has done before (and with sincerity, I thought), his respect for skilled, manual work. This was a major theme in the speech - the word “work”, or a variation of it, was used 69 times - and electorally this is important. Labour has the graduate vote sown up; it is the manual working vote it needs to win over.

Even better was the passage about being DPP, and his dealings with John and Penny Clough. Starmer’s admirers say that what they like about him most is his decency; in his speech he showcased it effectively to the nation.

Which brings us to Boris Johnson. The second virtue of the speech is that it included a critique of Johnson likely to be much more appealing to non-Labour voters than Angela Rayner’s. Not bad, but trivial. Perhaps this is too generous, and there are many people in the Conservative party would more likely to agree with Rayner than Starmer. But, if Hayden Munro is right (see 11.09am), this is the way to go.

Third, and related, this was a speech that lifted up the Labour party, plonked it in new place (the centre ground of British politics, where fighting crime isn’t seen as rightwing and pragmatism trumps ideology), and facing in the right direction (the future, not to Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan). I don’t know how interested Starmer really is in robotic surgery, but he sounded passionate about technology, and its possibilities. Those were the Wilson touches.

The speech also had some effective soundbites. “Make Brexit work” is good, and the two levelling up passages (see 12.10pm and 1.20pm) were first rate. If Labour can appropriate levelling up from the Tories, then Johnson would be bereft of a manifesto theme.

That said, the speech was rather scanty on how Starmer will actually deliver any of this. And of course a speech on its own - even a great one (which this probably isn’t) - will not on its own make a difference. And, at the moment, Starmer is not in touching distance of an election victory. (See 10.32am.)

But this was about as much as anyone could realistically expect, which makes it a success.

Labour says it would spend £6bn a year on home insulation programme

Labour has released this, summarising the green announcements in the speech.

The next Labour government will launch a “national mission” to make every home in the country warm, well insulated and cheaper to heat within a decade, Keir Starmer announced today.

The Labour leader’s plans would cut carbon emissions, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and save families over £400 a year on energy bills, easing the burden on working families.

This “national mission” would mean upgrading 19m homes in a decade, requiring £6bn annual investment.

The plan will provide security to working families, helping to ensure the lights don’t go out and making households less vulnerable to surges in energy prices.

Upgrading the energy efficiency of Britain’s housing is critical to putting the country on track to tackle the climate emergency.

The government’s own Committee on Climate Change has said all buildings need to be to a high energy-efficiency standard over the next 10-15 years, but two in every three homes in England currently fall below that standard.

Updated

Starmer's peroration

And here is the peroration.

This is a big moment, a time of rapid change. The first pandemic in a century, the aftermath of Brexit to sort out, the urgent claim of the climate.

Then our own domestic questions: providing a secure job that pays a decent wage, a good school nearby, health and social care you can rely on, a home you can afford.

This is a big moment that demands leadership. Leadership founded on the principles that have informed my life and with which I honour where I have come from.

Work.

Care.

Equality.

Security.

I think of these values as British values. I think of them as the values that take you right to the heart of the British public. That is where this party must always be.

And I think of these values as my heirloom. The word loom, from which that idea comes, is another word for tool.

Work.

Care.

Equality,

Security.

These are the tools of my trade.

And with them I will go to work.

Starmer refers to his father again. (See 12.20pm.)

That is what this party is for. That’s the object of the exercise and as the leader of this party I will always have that eye-on-the-object look. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.

Starmer says Labour can win next time.

So, let’s get totally serious about this – we can win the next election.

This government can’t keep the fuel flowing, it can’t keep the shelves stocked and you’ve seen what happens when Boris Johnson wants more money – he goes straight for the wallets of working people.

Labour is the party that is on the side of working people.

So imagine waking up the morning after the next election in the knowledge that you could start to write the next chapter in our nation’s history, bending it towards the values that bring us, year after year to this conference hall to seek a better way.

Proud in the knowledge that you were part of it.

I have loved my first full conference as leader 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.

Updated

Starmer is close to winding up, and he turns back to the question of the election.

I can see the ways in which we can remake this nation and that’s what we get to do when we win.

Yet, in a way the more we expose the inadequacy of this government the more it presses the question back on us. If they are so bad, what does it say about us? Because after all in 2019 we lost to them, and we lost badly. I know that hurts each and every one of you.

So, let’s get totally serious about this – we can win the next election.

Updated

Starmer praises the armed forces.

Let me say a word too about another band of great British men and women.

Our military put themselves in harm’s way to protect our security. I am proud of them and proud of the work they did for us in Afghanistan.

It grieves me to see Britain isolated and irrelevant. Labour is the party of Nato, the party of international alliances.

Under Labour we will rebuild our alliances, we will mend broken relationships and we will do right by the great Britons who serve in our armed forces.

Updated

'We are patriots', Starmer tells Labour

Starmer attacks the Conservatives for their record on culture wars.

I know Gordon [Brown] believes that if you look past the Tories’ pathetic attempts to divide us in a culture war you can glimpse a tolerant, progressive nation of which we can be proud.

I believe that our diversity is one of the things that makes this country great.

As this country continues to change, as we slowly liberate the talents of more people, as we name and tackle discrimination, as we make a better place for people with disabilities I believe we grow as a country.

When the government ignored Marcus Rashford’s campaign on school meals I was shocked.

But I couldn’t believe it when Rashford and the England team took the knee to highlight and condemn the racism they have had to endure, the home secretary encouraged people to boo.

Well, here in this conference hall we are patriots. When we discuss the fine young men and women who represent all our nations we don’t boo. We get to our feet and cheer.

Starmer says Gordon Brown is leading a commission on the future of the union.

As Gordon Brown said recently: “When a Welsh or a Scottish woman gives blood … she doesn’t demand an assurance it must not go to an English patient.”

I am delighted that Gordon will lead our commission to settle the future of the union.

Updated

Starmer says SNP 'walk in lock step' with Tories at moment, exploiting constitutional divide

Starmer praises Mark Drakeford’s record as first minister in Wales, and he turns to the importance of the union.

I believe in the union of the nations on these islands but we have a cavalier government that is placing it in peril.

Scotland is in the unfortunate position of having two bad governments – the Tories at Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood.

When Nicola Sturgeon took office she said she wanted to be judged on her record. These days, with the poorest in society less well-educated and less healthy, and the tragedy of so many drug-related deaths, we hear rather less about the SNP’s record.

The SNP and the Tories walk in lock step. They both exploit the constitutional divide for their own ends.

Labour is the party that wants to bring our nations together.

Updated

Starmer says record of Blair government shows Labour party of levelling up

Starmer turns to levelling up.

After a decade of Tory government, how we need that change. Under the Tories, wages have fallen in every English region.

Local government has been cut to the bone, more than half a million more children live in poverty and so do half a million more pensioners. For the first time in decades, life expectancy has stalled.

And, after all that, the Tories expect us to believe that levelling up is more than a slogan. Well, let me offer the Conservative party a lesson in levelling up.

If they want to know how to do it, I suggest they take a look at our record the last time we were in government - hospital waits down, GCSE results up, 44,000 more doctors, 89,000 new nurses, child poverty down 1 million, pensioner poverty down 1 million, rough sleepers down 75%, a national minimum wage, and the OECD said that no nation had a bigger rise in social mobility than Britain.

You want levelling up? That’s levelling up.

This gets loud cheering.

Updated

Starmer confirms Labour committed to green new deal

Starmer says Labour is committed to a green new deal.

This urgency is why Labour will bring forward a green new deal. Our green new deal will include a climate investment pledge to put us back on track to cut the substantial majority of emissions this decade.

If we are serious about climate change we will need to upgrade our homes. The Tories inherited plans from Labour to make every new home zero-carbon.

They scrapped them and now we have a crisis in energy prices emissions from homes have increased and we have the least energy-efficient housing in Europe.

So it will be Labour’s national mission over the next decade to fit out every home that needs it, to make sure it is warm, well-insulated and costs less to heat and we will create thousands of jobs in the process.

The reference to a green new deal gets a loud cheer. Labour activists passed a motion on a green new deal at conference that in some respects served as a proxy for the 2019 manifesto, which is partly why it was backed by groups like Momentum. It included the repeal of anti trade union laws and nationalising energy companies. Starmer’s version of a green new deal may turn out to be not quite as bold.

Updated

Starmer is now talking about the transition to a green economy.

Every time I enter a high-tech factory, I wonder what my dad would make of it.

Not so long ago we shaped metal by drilling it, milling it and turning it. I remember my dad working with a spark eroder submerging metal in liquid and using an electrical charge to shape it.

We thought it was revolutionary at the time.

But at Airbus recently, where they are developing the world’s first hydrogen wing I saw them working with 3D engineering, literally shaping components by bringing together particles and matter in a way unimaginable in the factory my dad used to work in.

I saw young apprentices, in a fully unionised factory proud of the skilled work they were doing. Their pride came from knowing they were at the heart of a revolution, building the next generation of hydrogen and battery planes.

They felt like the pioneers of flight, perched on the edge of the cliff taking the risk, knowing that success for one of them would change the world.

But the UK should not be importing wind turbines, he says.

In Scotland, I saw the great potential of wind power at Whitelee Windfarm. Yet, of the 250 wind turbines at Whitelee, not one was made in Britain.

From their manufacturing base in Fife the workforce can see the turbines literally being towed in from places such as Indonesia.

The next generation of deep-sea wind turbines could be our opportunity. Skilled engineering, offshore work, sectors where we could lead the world, if only we had a government willing to lead.

Updated

Starmer stresses his commitment to spending money carefully.

I take the responsibility of spending your money very seriously.

That’s why our approach to taxation will be governed by three principles.

The greater part of the burden should not fall on working people.

The balance between smaller and larger businesses should be fair.

And we will chase down every penny to ensure that people working people, paying their taxes always get value for money.

Starmer says UK needs plan to 'make Brexit work'

Starmer says the UK needs a plan to make Brexit work.

A botched Brexit followed by Covid has left a big hole.

The government is learning that it is not enough to Get Brexit Done.

You need a plan to Make Brexit Work.

I do see a way forward after Brexit if we invest in our people and our places, if we deploy our technology cleverly and if we build the affordable homes we so desperately need.

Starmer says he favours long-term investment.

I have lost count of how many business leaders have told me that they wish their time horizon could be longer.

So, when I say that Labour pledges to change the priority duty of directors to make the long-term success of the company the main priority we will do so with the blessing of British business.

Starmer says he wants to see revival in skilled jobs

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

We have 5.7 million people in low-paid and insecure work.

Workers in transport, care, education and the utilities.

These were the people who kept the show on the road during the pandemic and their reward is continued low pay and job insecurity.

The millennial generation, clustered in low-paying sectors will be the first generation to have lower lifetime earnings than the one which went before.

After a decade of the Conservatives, we have an economy with historically low rates of investment. Since 2010, in the investment league table out of 170 nations, Britain comes in a miserable 150th.

Labour will work with sectors in which we are strong. Pharmaceuticals, materials, defence, chemical engineering, consumer goods environmental technology, transport and biotechnology.

Under Labour’s Buy, Make, Sell in Britain programme there will be more local procurement.

The towns that were the crucibles of the original industrial revolution need to be revived in the next.

The coal and cotton towns of Lancashire, the wool towns of Yorkshire, the great maritime and fishing economies of our seaports. These places made Britain the envy of the world.

We cannot make the nation we want without them.

The lesson is that a secure well-paid workforce of skilled people in high-class work protected by good trade unions is not separate from good business.

Updated

Starmer is now talking about the importance of skills and technology generally.

In his great study The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, David Landis explains why Britain was home to the first Industrial Revolution.

The perfect home for growth, said Landis, had responsive, honest government.

I make no further comment about that.

It tended to favour the new over the old, enterprise over conservatism and it spread rewards evenly, to make the most of the talents of all the people.

But the most important factor of all the lessons we need to relearn was that Britain led the world in the technology of the day.

The flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the power loom.

These inventions were once the wave of the future.

Updated

Starmer says Labour will modernise the curriculum

Starmer sets out some of the education proposals first floated at the weekend.

We will reinstate two weeks of compulsory work experience and we will guarantee that every young person gets to see a careers adviser.

But young people won’t be ready for work or ready for life unless they are literate in the technology of the day.

Fewer than half of British employers believe young people have the right digital skills.

We do much worse in computer skills than most of our economic rivals.

That is why Labour will write a curriculum for tomorrow.

Reading, writing and arithmetic are the three pillars of any education.

He gives more examples.

We need to ensure that every child emerges from school ready for work. And ready for life.

And as in health so too in education we can work by the light of new technology.

Machine learning can cater for individual work styles.

Artificial intelligence can help tuition, especially for students with special needs.

Cloud computing has brought the archive of the best that has been said and done to the handset of every student.

There is so much possibility and all we have to do is to learn to adapt.

And he ends with a jibe about Boris Johnson.

And what is the small Tory idea to respond to this change?

They want to reintroduce Latin in state schools.

So let me put this crisis in the only language that Boris Johnson will understand.

Carpe diem.

Seize the day.

Updated

Starmer says the government’s catch-up plan for schools is inadequate. Sir Kevan Collins, the education recovery commissioner, resigned because it was so poor, he says.

He says Labour will launch “the most ambitious school improvement plan in a generation”. (See 9.22am.)

Under Labour education will recover. But education needs to do more than just recover.

It needs to be pointed in the direction I took from my dad. Towards skills. Towards work ...

Young people who can communicate and work in a team.

That’s why it’s stupid to allow theatre, drama and music to collapse in state schools.

We want every child to get the chance to play competitive sport and play an instrument

When I was at school, I had music lessons with Fatboy Slim. I can’t promise that for everyone.

Not even in Brighton.

But I can promise that Labour, as the name tells you, will make a priority of getting this country ready for work.

Updated

Starmer is now talking about education.

Education is so important I am tempted to say it three times.

That is a reference to Tony Blair’s “education, education, education” slogan.

Updated

Starmer tells a story to illustrate why the government should back science.

When I was at University College Hospital in London recently an orthopaedic surgeon told me about a robot. This robot sits in the operating theatre making sure every incision is just right.

The surgeon can’t go wrong because the robot works an override system.

A bit like a driving instructor in a car. The doctor and the robot working together are so efficient that patients can be discharged a whole day early.

Over time, that means thousands of hospital beds are freed up.

The range of possibilities is bewildering.

Precision editing of the genome will help us wipe out pathogens.

The science of robotics and exoskeletons helps patients who are struggling to move.

Virtual reality is being used to alleviate the suffering of post-surgical pain.

I could talk about this all day long, although I promise I won’t.

I don’t pretend to understand all the medical science.

But as politicians we have to recognise the scale of what is happening and put the power of smart government behind it.

Starmer says spending on mental health would never be allowed to fall under Labour

Starmer is now talking about mental health.

A Labour government would ensure the impact on wellbeing is taken into account when the government spends money, he says.

One of the urgent needs of our time is mental health.

Labour will guarantee that support will be available in less than a month.

We’ll recruit the mental health staff that we need.

Over 8,500 more mental health professionals supporting a million more people every year.

Under Labour, spending on mental health will never be allowed to fall.

Updated

Starmer says Labour would 'shift priority in NHS from emergency care to prevention'

Starmer says the government’s unfair tax hike won’t fix the social care crisis.

There is no proper plan, he says.

There is no doubt that the NHS needs more money.

And a Labour government will always fund the NHS properly.

But 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 reorganisation.

Starmer summarises the problem.

In 1900 the average British person expected to live to the age of 48.

Today, average life expectancy is 80.

The number of people aged 65 and over in this country is growing three times faster than the number aged under 65.

This is both a wonderful achievement and the biggest test in the history of the NHS.

He says Labour would “shift the priority in the NHS away from emergency care, towards prevention”.

Updated

Starmer is now talking about the recovery from Covid.

Covid-19 exposed the state of Britain 2020. After a decade of cuts and neglect, the health service wasn’t ready.

Just when the nation needed four nurses on its bed, sadly, they couldn’t always be there.

1.6 million older people were going without the care they needed. GP numbers had tumbled. Waiting lists for treatment had spiralled.

Then, on top of that, the government was fatally slow to respond.

The prime minister’s inability to make up his mind really mattered. Britain has the worst death toll in Europe.

We have now lost 133,000 people to Covid. Every one of them somebody’s mum, dad, brother, sister, friend.

I know it was difficult, but the situation is worse than it needed to be.

Updated

Starmer says the UK needs a leader who can rise to the challenge of the time.

The questions we face in Britain today are big ones. How we emerge from the biggest pandemic in a century. How we make our living in a competitive world.

The climate crisis. Our relationship with Europe. The future of our union.

These are big issues. But our politics is so small.

These times demand a responsible leader with clear values.

From my dad, I understand the dignity of work. From my mum, I appreciate the nobility of care. From my work, the principle that we are all equal before the law.

And from the victims of crime, that the law is there to make us secure. Work. Care. Equality. Security.

That’s what I mean by justice. That’s what I have been aiming at all my working life. That’s why I’m in politics.

Johnson 'a trivial man', but not 'a bad man', Starmer claims

Starmer says Johnson is not a bad man, but he is a trivial man.

Conference, it’s easy to comfort yourself that your opponents are bad people. But I don’t think Boris Johnson is a bad man. I think he is a trivial man. I think he’s a showman with nothing left to show. I think he’s a trickster who has performed his one trick.

Once he had said the words “Get Brexit Done” his plan ran out. He has no plan.

That’s quite a contrast from Angela Rayner’s critique of Johnson.

Starmer has two more examples.

When, in the autumn of 2010, I was the chief prosecutor working with Doreen Lawrence to finally get a prosecution of two of the men who murdered Stephen, Boris Johnson was writing an article in the Telegraph declaring a war on traffic cones.

And when this country was threatened by terrorists who were trying to bring down planes with liquid bombs, I spent the summer of 2010 helping to put those terrorists behind bars where they could no longer pose a danger to British citizens.

While I was doing that, what were you doing Mr Johnson? You were writing a piece defending your right not to wear a cycle helmet.

Updated

Starmer is making another contrast with Boris Johnson.

I’ve spent my entire working life trying to get justice done.

In 2003, when I was working with the Policing Board of Northern Ireland, while I was learning up close how hard it is to make split-second life-and-death decisions in a riot. As I worked with the police to create a lasting institution in accordance with the Good Friday agreement. Boris Johnson was a guest on Top Gear where, in reference to himself, he said to Jeremy Clarkson: “You can’t rule out the possibility that beneath the elaborately constructed veneer of a blithering idiot, lurks a blithering idiot.”

Updated

Johnson thinks rules don't apply to him, says Starmer

Starmer says he is offended by Boris Johnson’s refusal to follow the rules.

There’s something else I took from a career in the law. That there’s one law and it applies to everyone ...

The one thing about Boris Johnson that offends everything I stand for is his assumption that the rules don’t apply to him.

When Dominic Cummings took a trip to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight, Boris Johnson turned a blind eye.

When Matt Hancock breached his own lockdown rules, Boris Johnson declared the matter closed.

When I got pinged, I isolated. When Boris Johnson got pinged, he tried to ignore it. That’s not how I do business.

When I was the chief prosecutor and MPs fell short of the highest standards on their expenses, I prosecuted those who had broken the law.

Politics has to be clean; wrongdoing has to be punished. There are times in this parliament when I feel as if I have my old job back.

Updated

Starmer says he's not a career politician

Starmer says he is not a career politician.

I try to remain calm in the bear pit of parliamentary politics. I am not a career politician. I came to politics late in life and I don’t much like point-scoring.

Starmer is now talking about antisocial behaviour.

Today I’m here to tell you what I stand for. But I also want to tell you what I won’t stand for. I won’t stand for the 2 million incidents of antisocial behaviour this year. I won’t stand for the record levels of knife crime that we have in this country today. And I won’t stand nine out of 10 crimes going unsolved.

Under the Tories the criminal justice system is close to collapse. There has never been a bigger backlog in the crown courts …

The Tories are letting you down. And I can promise you that will never happen under my leadership.

Updated

Starmer promises to fast-track rape cases.

Labour will strengthen legal protections for victims of crime. We won’t walk around the problem. We’ll fix it.

When I learned that 98% of reported rape cases don’t end in a criminal charge. I couldn’t believe it. I asked my team to check the figures.

“That can’t be right,” I said. But it was. Shocking.

So, we will fast-track rape and serious sexual assault cases and we will toughen sentences for rapists, stalkers and domestic abusers.

This is part of who we are because this is part of who I am.

Updated

Starmer says fighting crime should always be 'a Labour issue'

Starmer turns to make a wider point.

And that’s why, under my leadership, the fight against crime will always be a Labour issue, a Labour issue.

He repeats “Labour issue” twice, a very faint echo of Neil Kinnock in 1985.

Starmer recalls what he learned from this experience.

John and Penny taught me how to keep your dignity under severe pressure. Doreen Lawrence taught me the same lesson. Hers was a long battle for justice for Stephen.

Against the odds. Confronting racism. But never giving up. Her courage and resilience over 28 years is impossible to describe in words.

I honestly don’t know how I would cope if anything happened to one of my children. But I do know I am humbled by John, by Penny and by Doreen.

Updated

Starmer is now recalling a case he dealt with as DPP.

I will always remember the day that John and Penny Clough contacted my office. Their daughter Jane was a nurse who had been the victim of terrible domestic abuse. After repeated assaults, Jane had summoned the great courage to report her partner. He was arrested and remanded in custody.

But then, very much against the wishes of the Clough family, he was let out on bail. Jane lived in constant fear that he would return to harm her. She tried to ensure she never travelled to work alone.

The one morning that Jane arrived at work unaccompanied, he was waiting for her in the hospital car park where he stabbed her 71 times.

When Jane’s parents got in touch, my office advised me not to see them. “You can’t get emotionally involved in cases” they said. I replied: “If I haven’t got time to see the parents of a young woman who has just been murdered, then what am I doing in this job?”

On the day that John and Penny were supposed to come and see me, to tell me about the cruel murder of their daughter and how the criminal justice system had let them down, my own daughter was born. We had to push the meeting back.

It was an incredibly emotional day for all of us. As I listened to John and Penny tell me Jane’s story, I knew that a great injustice had been done. I made a promise to John and Penny at the end of that first meeting.

That I would work with them to make sure that no other family went through what they had been forced to endure. And we rolled up our sleeves and we changed the law.

Starmer says John and Penny are now friends, and he says they are in the hall. They get a round of applause.

Starmer is now talking about his job as director of public prosecutions.

I had the great honour of becoming this country’s chief prosecutor, leading a large organisation; the Crown Prosecution Service.

Three very important words.

Crown brings home the responsibility of leading part of the nation’s legal system. Prosecution tells you that crime hurts and victims need justice to be done. Service is a reminder that the job is bigger than your own career advancement.

'Working out what's wrong, fixing it' - Starmer on his approach to politics

Starmer says he was not reared for politics, and went into law.

Every day as a lawyer, if you are a young radical as I was, you think of yourself as working for justice.

You see people getting a raw deal and you want to help.

Justice, for me, wasn’t a complicated idea. Justice, to me, was a practical achievement. It was about seeing a wrong and putting it right.

That is my approach in politics too. Down to earth. Working out what’s wrong. Fixing it.

The heckling is getting louder.

Starmer says it illustrates a contrast: “Chanting slogans, or changing lives.”

A British party leader has not had this much interruption giving a conference speech since Theresa May’s was disrupted by her own cough.

Sir Keir Starmer makes his keynote speech to the Labour conference.
Sir Keir Starmer makes his keynote speech to the Labour conference. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Updated

Starmer is talking about his mum now.

My mum worked incredibly hard too. She was a nurse in the NHS and a very proud nurse too.

I got from my mum an ethic of service. But my mum was also, unfortunately, a long-term patient of the NHS.

When she was young, she was diagnosed with Still’s disease. It’s a rare form of inflammatory arthritis which severely restricts mobility. This disease, along with the drugs she had to take to control it, took a heavy toll.

The NHS that had been her livelihood became her lifeline. There were times, many times, when mum was so ill that she had to go into hospital.

I remember going into the intensive care unit one day, as I often did. Mum’s bed was a riot of tubes and temperature devices.

I could sense the urgency in the conversation of the four nurses on my mum’s bed. I knew without being told that they were keeping her alive. I can hardly convey to you the emotion of seeing your mum in that condition.

And there was a sort of horrible irony in the moment. I had just picked up an award for work on the death penalty I’d been doing which in my own small way was about trying to save people’s lives.

I’d gone to the hospital hoping to tell my mum about it. And there in front of me, those four nurses were working to save her life.

When that long day was over, I thanked them for what they had done. And they said to me “we are just doing our job”. And they were.

They were doing their job for my mum that night, someone else’s mum the night before, someone else’s mum the night after.

But that’s not just a job. It’s a calling.

So, when I think of the extraordinary dedication of doctors and nurses, working to keep people alive as the Covid virus took hold, I know what that looks like.

I understand what that means and so just as we stood on our doorsteps and applauded.

Let this conference ring out its approval to the NHS staff, truly the very best of us.

There is still intermittent heckling, but it might just be from one person, and it is not distracting Starmer.

Starmer describes his admiration for 'beauty of skilled work', citing his dad

Starmer tells delegates about his dad.

I am not from a privileged background. My dad was a toolmaker in a factory …

At this point he includes a joke not in the script released to journalists, saying in a way Boris Johnson’s dad was a toolmaker too.

He gave me a deep respect for the dignity of work.

There are some lines from Auden that capture the beauty of skilled work.

“You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.”

I saw that eye-on-the-object look in my dad. The pride that good work brings. It puts food on the table and it provides a sense of dignity.

So, when I hear that this country is creating so many low-paid jobs and when I tell you that good work and fair growth will be the priority for a Labour government, I haven’t learned this in some political seminar.

I learned it round the kitchen table. I learned it at home, from my dad. How pride derives from work. How work is the bedrock of a good economy. And how a good economy is an essential partner of a good society.

That’s why I am so proud to lead a party whose name is Labour.

Updated

Starmer says he wants to tell the public about himself.

I believe in this country and I believe we will go forward.

Today I want to tell you how. Today I want to tell you where my passions were born and why I am in politics.

The two rocks of my life – the two sources of what I believe to be right and good – are family and work.

Updated

Starmer says the UK is at a turning point.

I see a government lost in the woods with two paths beckoning. One path leads back where we came from.

None of the lessons of Covid are heeded. The flaws that were brutally exposed by the pandemic all worsen. Childhood poverty increases. The crisis in social care gets worse. The housing market is still broken. Slow and steady decline.

But there is another path down which we address the chronic problems revealed by Covid, with the kindness and the togetherness that got us through.

That path leads to a future in which a smart government enlists the brilliance of scientific invention to create a prosperous economy and a contribution society in which everyone has their role to play.

It will be a future in which we make an opportunity out of tackling the climate crisis and in which Britain is once again a confident actor in the world.

Starmer heckled by activists as he criticises Corbyn for not offering 'serious plan for government'

Starmer turns to Labour, and says Labour must never again go into an election with “a manifesto that is not a serious plan for government”.

He does not mention Jeremy Corbyn by name, but this passage is a direct attack on Corbyn’s leadership.

This is our first full conference since the 2019 general election in which we suffered our worst defeat since 1935.

To our devoted activists and loyal voters I want to say loud and clear. You saved this party from obliteration and we will never forget it. Thank you.

But my job as leader is not just to say thank you to the voters who stayed with us. It is to understand and persuade the voters who rejected us.

To those Labour voters who said their grandparents would turn in their graves, that they couldn’t trust us with high office, to those who reluctantly chose the Tories because they didn’t believe our promises were credible.

To the voters who thought we were unpatriotic or irresponsible or that we looked down on them, I say these simple but powerful words. We will never under my leadership go into an election with a manifesto that is not a serious plan for government.

There is some heckling. Starmer says at this time on a Wednesday it is normally the Tories heckling him. He is not bothered, he says.

Updated

Starmer quotes the PM at the UN.

Let me quote what the prime minister said to the United Nations last week: “We believe that someone else will clear up the mess we make because that is what someone else has always done.”

This line may have been inspired by this Marina Hyde column.

Updated

Starmer says UK has 'fuel crisis, pay crisis, goods crisis and cost of living crisis – all at same time'

Starmer turns to the fuel crisis, and his first line is a zinger.

If you go outside and walk along the seafront, it won’t be long before you come to a petrol station which has no fuel. Level up? You can’t even fill up.

He goes on to explain why the government is responsible.

Doesn’t that just tell you everything about this government? Ignoring the problem, blaming someone else, then coming up with a half-baked solution.

Why do we suddenly have a shortage of HGV drivers? Why is there no plan in place?

A tank of fuel already costs £10 more than it did at the start of the year. Gas and electricity bills up. Gaps on the supermarket shelves.

And he says the UK has “a fuel crisis, a pay crisis, a goods crisis and a cost of living crisis – all at the same time”

Rent up, especially for those on the lowest incomes. Yet at this very moment, the government is putting up tax on working people. Putting up tax on small businesses and slashing universal credit.

We have a fuel crisis, a pay crisis, a goods crisis and a cost of living crisis – all at the same time.

Updated

Starmer thanks his shadow cabinet colleagues, and tells Louise Ellman “welcome home”.

He says it has not been an easy conference, and he starts with a joke.

Sunday was particularly nerve-wracking, but then the results came through: Arsenal 3-1 Tottenham.

Updated

Starmer says he has waited 17 months, 25 days and two hours to appear before them in this hall as leader of the party.

He thanks Doreen Lawrence for all she has done for justice, and for the party.

Sir Keir Starmer is on the stage now. He gets a standing ovation before he starts.

They are playing Right Here, Right Now, by Fatboy Slim.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, Wes Streeting, Rachel Reeves, Steve Reed and Angela Rayner alongside delegates ahead of leader Sir Keir Starmer’s speech.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, Wes Streeting, Rachel Reeves, Steve Reed and Angela Rayner alongside delegates ahead of leader Sir Keir Starmer’s speech. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

Updated

A video is now being played, showing Starmer in different settings. It’s all music so far, no words yet.

Updated

Doreen Lawrence is speaking in the hall now, introducing Sir Keir Starmer.

She says she first met him about 15 years ago. He took the decision to prosecute the murderers of her son, Stephen. She says she has met a lot of people who talk a lot, but Starmer is someone who listens and acts.

She says he is a friend. He asked her to be his race adviser and compile a report on race and Covid. She says when he read her conclusions, he said that as PM he would act on them. That is the sort of person he is.

Updated

This is from my colleague Heather Stewart, who is in the hall for the speech.

Keir Starmer has prepared a response to potential heckling, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg reports.

Andy McDonald urges Starmer to copy Joe Biden and work with left

Andy McDonald, who resigned from the shadow cabinet this week over Sir Keir Starmer’s failure to support a £15-an-hour minimum wage, has used an article for the Guardian to argue that Starmer was mistaken last night when he said winning was more important than unity. McDonald says Starmer should copy Joe Biden and work with the left. He says:

Starmer’s team have briefed that today’s conference speech will convey the message that “winning is more important than unity”, but one only need to look at the party’s polling and the leader’s approval ratings to recognise that pursuing a path based on breaking promises and needlessly dividing a party is only making a Labour victory less likely.

Rather than looking back into the past to Neil Kinnock, the leader and his team should look across the Atlantic to Joe Biden, who recognised that the Democrats’ route to power involved working with the left and the trade union movement. It’s not too late for Keir to learn this lesson and do the same, but I fear time is quickly running out.

McDonald’s article in full is here.

Updated

At the end of the general election session this morning, Dame Margaret Beckett, the Labour former foreign secretary who was chairing the session, paid tribute to Neil Kinnock. She said that after the 1987 defeat he got the party to focus on more than just attacking the government. She explained:

Neil said we’ve got to stop doing that, deal with the day-to-day issues of course, criticise the government when they get it wrong, of course, but we’ve got to think about the fact that the people who win the next election won’t be governing in the late 80s, they’ll be governing in the 90s and beyond.

Beckett was heckled by one delegate but she responded:

What difference can a government make and what difference can a Labour government make? If the most important question on your mind, comrade, is not the difference a Labour government can make, I don’t know why you’re here today.

Updated

This is from the pollster Joe Twyman on whether the leader’s speech at party conference matters.

Tories are 'ready for battle', Labour's campaign coordinator tells conference

Most references to Boris Johnson’s administration at the Labour conference have consisted of passionate claims about it being one of the most incompetent or reprehensible governments the country has ever seen. In her speech to the conference in the general election session, Shabana Mahmood, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, took a rather different approach, telling delegates not to underestimate the Tories as opponents.

  • Mahmood said the Tories were “ready for battle”. She said:

For me, rule one of winning is ‘know your enemy’.

If Boris Johnson’s cabinet reshuffle showed us anything, it’s that our enemy stands ready for battle and has firmly set the terrain for the next election.

A culture war unlike any we have previously seen. And we need to rise to that challenge.

  • She said Labour had to bring groups together to create a “winning voter coalition”. That meant abandoning “intolerance of diversity of opinion”. She said:

We need to understand what a winning voter coalition looks like. And start making the case for it – and to it.

And we need to do our politics differently.

Conference, we need to move away from what has become our default political setting, that says to secure the support of this group of people we must throw that group under the bus.

This intolerance of diversity of opinion risks paralysing our party and our politics. We need instead to build bridges between these groups.

  • She said claims in 2019 that the party was ready for a general election were false. She said:

Conference, the last time we were all here in Brighton in 2019 speaker after speaker told delegates and voters from this stage that Labour was ‘general election ready’. The crushing result, only a few months later, told us that we very much were not.

This is not a factional observation or a political stick with which to beat anyone. But a simple statement of electoral truth.

  • She said Labour candidates had to be representative. She said:

We will also redouble our efforts to select slates of candidates that better represent the communities and the country that they seek to serve.

Shabana Mahmood addressing the conference.
Shabana Mahmood addressing the conference. Photograph: Hannah McKay/Reuters

Updated

'Relentless positivity' key to electoral success, New Zealand strategist tells Labour

In his address to the conference by video link, Hayden Munro, the strategist credited with planning the New Zealand Labour party’s landslide win in 2020, offered his UK counterparts two key pieces of advice.

The first was about positivity. He told the delegates:

The first is the absolute importance of offering a hopeful and optimistic [vision]. These are times around the world that are really scary, are really challenging, and one of the first things that Jacinda Ardern did when she became the leader of the New Zealand Labour party was commit us to relentless positivity.

She made it a very clear rule to our caucus, to our party: no negativity attacks, we talk about what’s positive, the hopeful, optimistic vision that we have for New Zealand.

(Presumably calling your opponents “scum” would not meet with Ardern’s approval.)

Munro also stressed the importance of finding arguments that appeal to target voters. He said:

The second thing, and this is where I think this falls not just to the leaders of parties, but to campaigners – from activists to campaign leadership – is the absolute importance of running united, disciplined, focused campaigns that are grounded in credible research into what the voters that we need actually [want].

Persuasion is an away game. It happens in the other person’s [field], not our own. And we found that if we grounded in our campaigners in research and what works, we had a much better chance of success.

This was probably an easier message for the party, because focusing on the concerns of target voters is what Starmer is doing. As mentioned earlier, he has appointed Deborah Mattinson, the pollster who wrote a book about the views of Labour defectors in “red wall” seats, as his director of strategy.

At the start of his presentation Munro said that although he was introduced as someone who worked on the New Zealand Labour party’s successful 2020 campaign, he also worked on its 2014 campaign, which was its worst since the 1930s. He said this showed that if a party changed, it could transform its fortunes relatively quickly.

Updated

The Labour MP Rosie Duffield attended an unofficial event in Brighton last night and, according to the Times (paywall), she objected to suggestions she was a “dinosaur” because of her views on trans issues. She said:

It’s ridiculous and nothing about me is a dinosaur. I’m angry at colleagues chucking me on the railway tracks. I’m even more determined. I’m not a transphobe, I never have been and I never will be. I simply want to use the word women.

David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary who used the word “dinosaur” at a fringe meeting to describe people opposed to trans rights, told Times Radio: “I don’t recall ever calling my friend Rosie Duffield a dinosaur.”

Updated

Political speeches are never delivered in a vacuum. How they are received is to a large extent shaped by what people already feel about the party, and the leader, and so here is a recap, with three charts from the latest polling from Ipsos MORI (pdf).

This shows what has happened to party support since the 2015 election.

Polling since 2015
Polling since 2015 Photograph: Ipsos MORI

This shows what has happened to Sir Keir Starmer’s ratings since he was elected leader.

Starmer’s satisfaction ratings
Starmer’s satisfaction ratings Photograph: Ipsos MORI

And this shows how Starmer’s ratings compare with the ratings of other opposition leaders since 1980, at this stage in their leadership. Astonishingly, only two of these leaders have gone on to win a general election (Tony Blair and David Cameron). Starmer is polling well below both of them.

Satisfaction with opposition leaders since 1980
Satisfaction with opposition leaders since 1980 Photograph: Ipsos MORI

The Labour conference proceedings are just starting. Before the first proper session, on general election planning, they are dealing with some procedural matters, and a trans delegate, Jennifer Kaye, has just complained that the party is not doing enough to protect trans people. She said Rosie Duffield should have the whip removed. Another delegate has just spoken, also calling for Duffield to lose the whip, and complaining that a speaker was allowed to defend Duffield during the debate yesterday.

Nick Robinson may be feeling that this vindicates that his line of questioning to David Lammy this morning. (See 9.40am.)

Starmer won't make uncosted spending pledges like Corbyn, says Lammy

Here are some more lines from David Lammy’s morning interviews.

  • Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, criticised Jeremy Corbyn for making uncosted spending commitments and said Sir Keir Starmer would not make that mistake. He said:

We will not be making proposals that cannot be costed, the public need to know where the money is coming from.

Clearly it was the case at the last general election, we were coming up with policies like free broadband, policies on pensions for women, a four-day week, and the public were saying ‘how much is this going to cost’?

It was coming at the last minute, they felt confused and they didn’t feel able to trust us because of some of the issues that were dominating the party.

Keir is not going to make that mistake, things have to be costed.

  • Lammy said Labour did believe in common ownership, but decisions had to be taken on a case-by-case basis. He said:

A party that is set on an ideological mission is usually rejected by the British people. So, do we have a belief in common ownership? Yes, we do.

But you have got to look at the best value case as it sits at the time. We are some way off the next general election.

There may well be a case for nationalisation of the rail but it might be different in a different sector or an industry.

So we can’t just say – in the way that you might do if you were the politburo – ‘we are going to nationalise everything’, that doesn’t make sense.

You have got to look case by case, sector by sector.

Jeremy Corbyn speaking last night at the Socialist Campaign group rally at The World Transformed, an event outside the main conference, last night.
Jeremy Corbyn speaking last night at the Socialist Campaign group rally at The World Transformed, an event outside the main conference, last night. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Updated

Lammy criticises BBC for asking about trans issues in interview ahead of Starmer's speech

David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, was doing the morning interview round on behalf of Labour, but it did not go entirely smoothly and he ended up attacking the BBC Today programme presenter Nick Robinson for asking him about trans issues.

All week, largely because of the controversy about the Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who decided not to attend conference because of the criticism she has received over her comments about trans women, Labour shadow cabinet ministers have found themselves being interrogated about cervixes and how a woman should be defined. They have not always found it easy to respond. (See here and here, for example.) Interviewing Lammy, Robinson asked him who he was referring to when he told a fringe meeting yesterday that people hostile to trans rights were “dinosaurs”.

That prompted Lammy to hit back, accusing Robinson of setting “a bit of a trap” and suggesting he should be asking about mainstream policies instead. He said that one in four trans people has attempted suicide, and that they needed better treatment, but he insisted this was an issue that never gets raised by voters on the doorstep. Then he accused Robinson of getting his priorities wrong. He said:

You could be asking me about climate change, you could be asking me about mental health, you could be asking about education, you could be asking about health. You are deliberately asking me about an issue that you know does not come up on the doorstep ...

You, the BBC, are choosing to land on this subject that most British people aren’t talking about in a fuel crisis and spend minutes on this because it keeps Labour talking identity issues, and not about the substantive policies that Keir will set out.

Robinson justified his decision to raise the question by pointing out that Deborah Mattinson, the pollster who is now head of strategy for Starmer, has in the past said that a significant problem for Labour is that “red wall” voters do not relate to the values of its young, metropolitan, socially liberal activists (for whom trans rights are particularly important).

David Lammy on the conference platform yesterday.
David Lammy on the conference platform yesterday. Photograph: James McCauley/Rex/Shutterstock

Updated

Labour would reform Ofsted so it focuses on struggling schools, Starmer to announce in conference speech

Good morning. Last year, when Sir Keir Starmer gave his first speech as leader to a Labour conference, it was online, which meant that it had all the excitement, immediacy and clout of Zoom call. As if that was not enough, it happened just as the second wave of Covid was taking off, and it was overshadowed by a Boris Johnson televised address to the nation later in the day announcing some new restrictions. The speech was well received on its own terms, but, as a leadership-defining moment it was always doomed to failure.

That is why today’s speech is particularly important. If Starmer cannot use it to jumpstart Labour’s performance in the polls (which currently imply the party is on course to lose the next election), he will be out of excuses.

Labour briefed some extracts from the speech overnight, saying that Starmer would promise to make mental health treatment available to everyone who needs it within a month, and create drop-in mental health hubs aimed at children and young people. Here is my colleague Heather Stewart’s overnight story.

And this morning the party has released another snippet from the speech: Starmer will pledge to reform Ofsted so that in future it focuses on struggling schools, as part of a school improvement plan which the party says is intended to “boost the number of outstanding schools in all areas of the country; drive up standards; and enable every child to achieve their full potential”.

Here is an extract from the briefing released by Labour.

The national excellence programme will include: recruiting thousands of new teachers to address vacancies and skills gaps across the profession; reforming Ofsted to focus on supporting struggling schools; providing teachers and headteachers with continuing professional development and leadership skills training.

Even before the pandemic, 200,000 primary age children in England were growing up in areas with not a single primary school rated good or outstanding.

Labour says there are 200,000 primary-age children living in areas with no good or outstanding schools, and it says this is a particular problem in the north-east, where 11 out of 12 local authorities have a higher than average share of pupils attending an underperforming school. It also says “a secondary school pupil living in the north of England is around five times as likely to attend an underperforming school than one of their peers living in London”.

(Interestingly, in the briefing sent to journalists, Labour cites as the source for some of this data this report partly written by Onward, a mainstream Conservative thinktank.)

In his speech, Starmer will say:

I want every parent in the country to be able to send their child to a great state school.

On top of that, 40% of young people leave compulsory education without essential qualifications. What does that say about their future? We will not put up with that.

That is why Labour will launch the most ambitious school improvement plan ever.

There are only two items on the agenda for the day.

9.45am: Conference opens with a session headlined “General election report”. The contributors include Hayden Munro, the strategist credited with planning the New Zealand Labour party’s landslide win in 2020; Muthoni Wambu Kraal, national political and organising director for the Democratic National Committee in the US for the 2020 presidential election; Vaughan Gething, the Welsh government’s economy minister; Dan Norris, the Labour mayor of the West of England; and Shaban Mahmood, Labour’s national campaign coordinator.

12pm: Sir Keir Starmer gives his speech.

I will be focusing exclusively on Labour today. For the latest in the fuel shortage crisis, do follow my colleague Julia Kollewe’s business live blog.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com

Starmer looking at his conference speech from his hotel balcony.
Starmer looking at his conference speech from his hotel balcony. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

Updated

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