Starmer: Boris just isn’t up to the job
Keir slates PM’s failure on Covid and Brexit in first speech as leader
THE Labour leader has slammed Boris Johnson’s “serial incompetence” over Brexit and coronavirus and said a second national lockdown would be a “sign of Government failure, not an act of God”.
In a speech that should have been his keynote party conference address to thousands of members, Keir Starmer said the PM was “just not up to the job”.
As he sought to position himself as a credible alternative to the Tory government, Starmer contrasted his approach with that of the Prime Minister.
In a full-on personal attack on Johnson, the Labour leader hit out the Government’s handling of coronavirus and did a demolition job of the PM’s character flaws.
Starmer said in his online address: “A crisis reveals character like nothing else. And I think we’ve learnt a lot about this Prime Minister. Tory backbenchers know it. His Cabinet knows it. We all know it. He’s just not serious. He’s just not up to the job.”
He added: “Whenever he encounters a problem, Johnson responds either by wishing it away or by lashing out.
“He wished away the problems with the Irish border. Then, when he finally realised what he’d signed up to, he lashed out and decided to break international law.”
Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, said: “While Boris Johnson was writing flippant columns about bendy bananas, I was defending victims and prosecuting terrorists. While he was being sacked by a newspaper for making up quotes, I was fighting for justice.”
Starmer said Johnson was “will be failing Britain” if he fails to get a Brexit deal and claimed “the Government’s incompetence is holding us back” as he listed the failures on coronavirus.
The speech was heavy on Labour values, on personal and national security and love of country in order to distance the party from the Corbyn legacy.
But the speech was light on policy and on what Labour will do about calls for an independence referendum in Scotland. He promised instead to win for “the country I love and because of the values I hold dear”.
He said: “When you win, you come out of the shadows. You change lives. You make a difference to your country.
“To do that, we must once again be the party of the whole United Kingdom. The party of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
“We must make the case much more persuasively that we achieve more together than we do alone to stop the Nationalists ripping our country apart by design and to stop the Tories dismantling it by neglect.”