Keir Starmer speech on 2019 defeat: Recap key points and reaction

Keir Starmer gave a speech in Milton Keynes this morning, marking the four-year anniversary of the Labour Party’s general election defeat in 2019.

The Labour leader stressed Labour is “once again a party of service, not protest”, contrasting its vision of renewal with not just the “psychodrama” of Conservative in-fighting over the “Rwanda gimmick” but Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour – and the party “for a while” before that.

He said Labour’s job is to give the country not a “miracle cure” but a “realistic hope”, offering “credible solutions” rather than “empty gestures or the moralising self-indulgence of those who think politics is a sermon about themselves”.

Recap all the key lines from the speech and reaction in the liveblog below. You can watch the speech here:

12:07pm: “We have to earn every single vote,” Starmer declares

“We have to earn every single vote”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says his party must “fight like we’re five points behind in the polls” and adds “the country can’t afford another five years of this”

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— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) December 12, 2023

Starmer also stressed the “huge challenge” facing Labour at the next general election, declaring that he is “not complacent in the slightest”.

“We have to earn every single vote. We have to earn back the votes we lost. We have to earn the votes that we never got in the first place.”

And that’s all from our liveblog today! Thanks for following along.

12:00pm: ‘Really good diversity’ in Labour candidates but ‘always more to do’, Starmer says

The Mirror’s Sophie Huskisson said no graduates of the Bernie Grant leadership programme have yet been selected as Labour parliamentary candidates and asked Starmer whether he agrees Labour must do more to ensure diversity in its top ranks.

Starmer said: “In relation to representation in the Labour Party, yes, there’s always more that we need to do. I want a Labour Party that is diverse, that represents the communities we seek to serve.”

The Labour leader said the Bernie Grant scheme is a “very, very good scheme”. He added that he is “pleased” that there is “really good diversity” in the candidates that have been selected for the next election.

11:52am: Starmer does not explicitly describe the Rwanda scheme as “morally wrong”

Asked whether he thinks a Rwanda-style scheme “is not only impractical but a morally wrong thing to do”, Starmer said “I don’t think it’ll work, I think it’s very expensive and it’s the wrong thing to do.”

He argued that it is “looking at the problem at the wrong end”, stressing the need to deal with the “trade in people across the world”.

He added: “If we’re serious about dealing with this issue… we’ve got to recognise that we’ve got a responsibility to do something about the things that are driving people across borders.” He noted that one of the “biggest drivers” is and will increasingly be climate change.

11:42am: Starmer stresses Miliband “a very good member of my shadow cabinet”

Starmer has now finished the Q&A. Elsewhere during the session, he was asked about his comments about how the party had “lost our way, not just under Jeremy Corbyn” and whether he was referring to Ed Miliband’s leadership of the party.

Starmer said he was “reflecting the fact that we’ve lost four elections in a row”, adding that he thinks it is a “mistake” to think “it was simply what happened four years ago today that is the sole cause of our problem”.

“This isn’t about an individual. Ed Miliband’s a very good member of my shadow cabinet on a very important brief… But as a party, we drifted too far from the core function of serving working people.”

11:30am: Starmer predicts Rwanda bill will go through tonight

Keir Starmer predicts Rwanda bill will sail through: “It will go through tonight I don’t have a doubt. There’s just a lot of shouting and screaming going on…

“I don’t think we should allow them the indulgence of saying it’s gong to be very tight and that he’s done a brilliant…

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) December 12, 2023

As the Guardian’s Pippa Crerar reports, Starmer predicted during the journalist Q&A that the government’s Rwanda bill would be passed by MPs later today.

The Labour leader added that, if Sunak loses the vote, “of course he should call a general election”, declaring: “The sooner we see the back of them, the better.”

11:21am: Labour “did lose our way” during the 2019 election, Starmer argues

“I didn’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn to be leader of our party in 2015 or 2016”

Sir Keir Starmer is asked by Sky’s @TamCohen whether he regrets staying in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet for so long

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— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 12, 2023

Starmer is now taking questions from journalists. Asked about serving in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet “until the bitter end”, the Labour leader notes that he did not vote for Corbyn to be party leader in 2015 or 2o16 but adds that he thought it was important to serve on the frontbench during the Brexit negotiation period.

He tells attendees that Labour “did lose our way” during the 2019 election and argues that “you change your party” after such a result, highlighting the fact that Corbyn will not be standing as a Labour candidate as evidence of how far the party has changed.

11:09am: “Britain will get its future back,” Starmer declares

Starmer says if Labour is “privileged enough” to win the next election, the party will “set the direction” and “give Britain hope”.

“Britain can, Britain must, Britain will get its future back,” he declares in closing.

11:06am: Starmer argues “only a change of government can bring change to our country”

Starmer addresses those who voted for Brexit or for the Tories in 2019 and are ‘still waiting for change’: “Only a change of government can bring change to our country.”

He urges voters to “join us on this mission”, declaring that “Britain must come together”.

“If the British people see respect and service in their politics, then they will commit to the national mission of renewal,” he adds.

11:00am: ‘Stopping the boats means stopping the gimmicks,’ Starmer declares

Starmer describes the Rwanda scheme as an “exercise in Conservative Party management”. He argues that the current Conservative Party aren’t “Churchillian” Tories anymore but are behaving “more and more like Donald Trump”.

He declares that stopping the boats is “about doing the basics better” and “means stopping the gimmicks”. He adds that, if the Tories can’t do that, “then it’s tine to stand aside and let the Labour Party do it for them.”

10:55am: ‘No one will be above the law in the Britain I lead,’ Starmer says

Starmer argues that political trust “isn’t just low, it’s on the edge” and that  “people now think politics is about naked self-enrichment”.

He declares that the “hoarding of power in London” always lead to an economy that “hoards potential” and stresses Labour’s ambition to take power and control “out of our hands” and “place them in yours”.

“We’ll need to clean up politics as well,” the Labour leader adds, pledging to restore standards and oversee a “crackdown on cronyism”. He says that “no one will be above the law” in the Britain he leads.

10:50am: Starmer says ‘driving project’ of leadership has been ‘restoring party to service of working people’

“Until your family sees a way out, Labour will fight for you,” Starmer declares. He says the “driving project” of his leadership has always been to “restore my party to the service of working people”.

The Labour leader tells attendees to cast their minds back to the 2019 election, saying that, at that election, working people looked at Labour “and they said no. Not this time. You don’t listen to us anymore”.

“And they were right,” he adds. “We’d taken a leave of absence from our job description… that we serve working people as they drive our country forward.”

10:45am: Tories ‘never matched working people’s ambition’, Starmer argues

The Labour leader accuses the Tories of having “written off” working people “for too long” and having “never matched their ambition”.

“Mark my words, we will,” he declares.

10:42am: ‘We’re all stuck in the Tories’ psychodrama’, Starmer says

Starmer has begun his speech in Milton Keynes. He begins by declaring “world-leading” is not something you could say about UK politics at the moment, adding: “The circus is back in Westminster today.”

He tells attendees that people often say to him “all this is great for you”, but stresses: “Honestly, no.” The Labour leader adds: “We’re all stuck in their psychodrama.”

8.50am: Why is Starmer in Milton Keynes?

Starmer likely has in mind the fact Milton Keynes North is held by the Conservatives with only a 6,255-vote majority, while Milton Keynes South only has a 6,944-seat majority.

Labour gained 5 councillors in this year’s local elections, taking it to 25 to the Tories’ 17 and Lib Dems’ 15 seats on Milton Keynes council, a unitary authority governing the best known of Britain’s postwar New Towns in Buckinghamshire.

8.46am: Starmer didn’t change Labour ‘for the sake of it’

Ahead of his speech, Starmer posted on X this morning: “However you voted four years ago, you’re still waiting for the change you demanded. I changed the Labour Party – not for the sake of it, but to put us back in the service of working people. Now, I want to change the country.”