Hope, service, change: Keir Starmer’s latest speech keywords unpacked

Keir Starmer delivered his New Year speech last Thursday, setting out his party’s stall for the next general election and warning voters that 2024 is “the only chance” to change Britain’s course.

Starmer described 2024 as a “year of choice”, telling voters his party “will fight every day” to earn their votes. “Only Labour will make a difference. Only Labour will drag our politics back to service. Only Labour can lead Britain towards national renewal. And you have the power to vote for it,” he declared.

LabourList has now analysed the keywords used in Starmer’s speech via the Flourish tool, shown in the word cloud above. We have excluded common words like “the”, “a” and “of”. The full text of the Labour leader’s speech can also be found here.

Keir’s favourite themes

Naturally as opposition leader, Starmer repeatedly used the word “change”, notching up 21 mentions, and said “new” 15 times.

“People” got 30 mentions, with “working” attached six times, while “politics” got 29 mentions in a speech heavy on promises to do politics differently. It included a pledge of “politics that treads a little lighter on all of our lives”, rather than “politics fuelled by division”.

“Westminster” was mentioned six times, including an eye-catching line about voters being right to be “anti-Westminster”.

Starmer said “country” 20 times, “Britain” 18 times and “national” 12 times (Scotland and England got one reference each, Wales none).

Notably, “hope”  was a keyword (18 mentions). Starmer declared that, “to truly defeat this miserabilist Tory project”, a new “Project Hope” is needed – a “credible hope, a frank hope, a hope that levels with you about the hard road ahead, but which shows you a way through”.

“Tory” or “Tories” got 19 mentions, and “fourteen” got six mentions, in relation to their time in office.

Service, service, service

Watch Live: Keir Starmer https://t.co/YMhQwKANbv

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) January 4, 2024

“Service” was used 16 times, with the word increasingly common in Starmer’s recent rhetoric. Researcher Ollie Gough noted this in another recent speech and wrote an analysis of the history of the idea and its use by Labour for us here.

“Power” got 10 mentions; “economy” and “plan” both had nine mentions; “difference” and “promise” got seven; “renewal” and “respect” got six; “Northern Ireland” got five as Starmer talked about his work there.

“Opportunity” and “opportunities” were mentioned six times. “Election”, “growth” and “energy” were each used five times.

There were three uses each of “children”, “potential”, “schools” “responsibility”, “project”,  “forward”, “ambition”, “community”, “business”, “tax”, “NHS”, “pandemic”,  “decline”, “partnership”, “cynicism”, “defeat”, “division” and “scandals”.