Starmer makes appeal to working- class Scots
KEIR Starmer made a bid to reconnect with working class voters who left Labour as he attempts to secure victory at the next General Election.
At the Scottish Labour Conference in Glasgow, he said his party “has to win” in Scotland.
Starmer’s pitch, in the closing speech at the SEC on the final day of the conference, was to people in communities where Labour votes were once guaranteed but who deserted in droves to the SNP.
He said: “We know Scotland will judge us, will judge Britain, by our actions, not our words.
“For our argument to convince again, it needs to feel true in the communities that once voted for us but have found a new political home with the SNP.”
Starmer is on course to become Prime Minister, with Labour well ahead of the Tories in UK opinion polls, but in Scotland, the contest with the SNP is far closer. The latest Ipsos poll earlier this month had the SNP on 39% and Labour on 32%, with the gap narrowing considerably in the last year, in favour of Labour.
Starmer said the Labour Party has changed and talked up the link with the party’s roots in working- class communities.
The UK Labour Party leader said: “I’ve always said we have to win in Scotland, have to win in the red wall in England, have to win in the working- class communities in the valleys of Wales as well.
“This project has a purpose. We changed the Labour Party for a reason, to unite working people behind that old partnership.
“We serve working people as they drive our country forward.”
Starmer said class was still a huge factor in politics.
He said: “People say speaking about class or working people just isn’t a strong enough identity anymore.
“Not when we have to compete with a party which claims they – and only they – can be a vehicle for Scottish national pride.”
He said others say it is not “edgy enough” and “division is the order of the day” to get attention.
Starmer said: “But how can you talk about changing inequality, or racism, or any other structural injustice in this country, without an account of class?”
As MPs are likely to be asked to vote on an SNP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and protests in Glasgow over the weekend, he set out his position.
He said he wanted “a return of all the hostages taken on October 7, an end to the killing of innocent Palestinians, a huge scaling up of humanitarian relief, and an end to the fighting”.
“Not just now, not just for a pause, but permanently. A ceasefire that lasts,” he added.
“That is what must happen now. The fighting must stop.”
He added: “Any ceasefire cannot be one- sided. It must stop all acts of violence, on both sides, it must lead to a genuine peace process.”
He also said there must be no Israeli offensive into Rafah in the south of Gaza, where more than one million have fled.
Starmer said: “The offensive threatened on Rafah, the place where 1.5m people are now cramped together in unimaginable conditions with nowhere else for them to go, cannot become a new theatre of war.
“That offensive cannot happen.”