In his leader’s speech to the Labour Party conference this week, Keir Starmer promised to “build a new Britain”.
Following 13 years of Conservative rule there is certainly a need to rebuild Britain’s social and economic wasteland, but while his speech was strong on emotion, it tended to romanticise what New Labour is against, rather than emphasise what it is for.
Criticising the Tories is hardly the basis for a new society.
While it is unrealistic to expect a party leader to deliver a detailed election manifesto at this stage, Starmer relied rather too heavily on sound bites rather than sound policies. For example, he said: “People are looking to us because they want our wounds to heal and we are the healers.”
That is more the jargon of advertising than the language of policy-making. While any leader’s speech has to have some emotional appeal, a presentation which is top-heavy with emotion raises doubts about what Labour would actually do if it were successful in the next election.
Mr Starmer’s speech provided few clues.
He spoke instead, in the style of the poet Wordsworth, about how the English Lake District “never lets you down”. On a visit there he had fish and chips and his wife had a plant burger. Vote Labour for an idyllic Britain.
He spoke of “shouldering the burden for working people”, when he might have been reasonably expected to outline how he would support the millions of sick and disabled people who are suffering under the present cuts to the benefits system.
Such detail would also have been of particular interest in this part of the world where we have the highest NHS waiting lists in the UK, amid growing poverty and deprivation.
His only references to the north were to give Labour credit for the peace process and to refer to his time here in the prosecution service. He might have mentioned the impasse at Stormont or even expanded on his apparent plan to improve EU-UK relations.
Instead he offered us: “The fire of change burns within Britain.” His omission of any significant reference to the north suggests that he does not believe that the flame of change extends to all of the UK. But perhaps he does not expect us to remain within the United Kingdom.
His views on that would make for a more interesting speech.
