We deserved our election drubbing, admits Sir Keir
He casts Corbyn aside and slams ‘serially incompetent’ Boris in speech
‘Get serious about winning’
Sir Keir Starmer yesterday admitted Labour deserved its drubbing in the last election as he strove to distance himself from the disastrous leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. in a major speech in Yorkshire – where Labour lost a number of seats to the Tories – he stressed that ‘this is a party under new leadership’ which would stand for patriotism, security and family.
Not once did he even mention the name of his hard-Left predecessor, preferring instead to name check triple-election winning Tony Blair.
Seeking to position Labour as a credible alternative government, Sir Keir hit out at Boris Johnson over his ‘serial incompetence’ regarding Covid-19 and Brexit.
With Britain facing one of the highest death rates in the world and on the threshold of one of the deepest recessions, he said there was no doubt ‘the Government’s incompetence is holding us back’. ‘They couldn’t get kids back into school in June,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t work out a fair system to get exams marked.
‘They couldn’t get protective equipment to care workers and they wasted millions of your money in the process.
‘Their failure to protect care homes is a national scandal. They still can’t organise a testing regime that’s even serviceable, let alone world-beating.’
He said Mr Johnson was ‘just not serious’ and ‘he’s just not up to the job’. Sir Keir, 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 and the rule of law.’ The speech in Doncaster was delivered without an audience due to coronavirus, and replaced what would have been his keynote party conference address.
Sir Keir said Labour also had to be ‘brutally honest’ in its examination of its own failures. ‘When you lose an election in a democracy, you deserve to,’ he said.
‘You don’t look at the electorate and ask them, “What were you thinking?” You look at yourself and ask, “What were we doing?”
‘The Labour Party has lost four general elections in a row. We’ve granted the Tories a decade of power. The Tories have had as many election winners in five years as we’ve had in 75.’ it was now time to get ‘serious about winning’, Sir Keir said as he gave himself the job of emulating Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair. The party’s next election manifesto ‘will be rooted in Labour values’, but ‘ it won’t sound like anything you’ve heard before’. He said Labour could only win back trust by providing ‘security and opportunity at work’ and ending ‘structural flaws in our economy’ that meant people had barely had a pay rise for a decade.
The party would fix the housing crisis, he said, and understand the need for an economy that tackles climate change. Labour would give ‘young people the start in life they deserve’ and ‘older people the dignity that they’ve earned’.
He called on the Prime Minister to end a ‘decade of drift’ by coming up with a plan to fix social care.
The Labour leader acknowledged the party faced a difficult path back to power. ‘Trust takes time,’ he said. ‘it starts with being a credible Opposition – with taking the job seriously. That’s what we will do.
‘So to those people in Doncaster and Deeside, in Glasgow and Grimsby, in Stoke and in Stevenage, to those who have turned away from Labour, i say this – we hear you.
‘Never again will Labour take you or the things you care about for granted. And i ask you, take another look at Labour.’