Starmer promises bill to ‘take back control’

Labour leader targets Brexit voters with plan to devolve powers if his party wins next general election

‘It is not unreasonable for us to recognise the desire for communities to stand on their own feet’

SIR KEIR STARMER has pledged to introduce “Take Back Control” legislation as he bids to win over Brexit voters.

The Labour leader said that if he is elected prime minister, he will introduce a bill aimed at devolving power away from Westminster.

In his first major speech of the year, Sir Keir said he “couldn’t disagree with the basic case so many Leave voters made to me”.

He promised to “embrace” the Take Back Control message that was used by the Vote Leave campaign, saying he would turn it “from a slogan to a solution”.

His remarks will be seen as an attempt to woo Red Wall voters and bring them back into the fold after many deserted the Labour Party during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

Sir Keir said it was “not unreasonable for us to recognise the desire for communities to stand on their own feet” and that is “what Take Back Control meant”.

Speaking in east London on the site of the London 2012 Olympic Games, Sir Keir said: “All this will be in a new Take Back Control bill – a centrepiece of our first King’s speech. A bill that will deliver on the demand for a new Britain. A new approach to politics and democracy. A new approach to growth and our economy.”

The new legislation will enable local authorities and local governments to apply for greater devolution in areas such as transport, infrastructure, skills and training.

Sir Keir, who was accompanied by Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, also used his speech to vow that Labour will not “get its big government chequebook out again” if it wins the next election, saying Britain cannot spend its way out of its problems. He argued that his party is ready to govern again, criticising the “sticking-plaster politics” of recent years and promising a plan for “a decade of national renewal”.

Sir Keir’s message was designed as a break from the Corbyn era but may also be seen as marking a different approach to Gordon Brown, whose Treasury minister joked when leaving office in 2010 that “there is no money left”.

However, his speech made no mention of illegal immigration nor how he would solve the small boats crisis.

Sir Keir accused Rishi Sunak of being in denial about the country’s problems as he took aim at the five pledges the Prime Minister set out on Wednesday.

He said Mr Sunak’s list amounted to “more promises, more platitudes”, adding that there was “no ambition to take us forward. No sense of what the country needs. Thirteen years of nothing but sticking-plaster politics”.

Sir Keir’s speech came the day after Mr Sunak gave the most detailed vision for his premiership to date, gambling re-election on the delivery of what he called five “promises”.

The two speeches, both made at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and coming less than 24 hours apart, set out the likely battleground for the next general election, expected in 2024.

James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, labelled Sir Keir’s speech a “whole load of nothing”. He said: “The only thing we did hear from him in that speech was a complete contradiction about Labour’s spending plans.”

Labour is “playing for Team Sturgeon” as it is impossible to distinguish between them on most policies, Douglas Ross will argue today.

The Scottish Conservative leader will use a keynote speech in Edinburgh to insist that his party is the only credible opposition to Nicola Sturgeon because “you can’t fit a hair between Labour and the SNP”.