Starmer will say Labour must rebuild Britain but cannot do it “with easy answers”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer will say the government has no “easy answers” to offer as it works to rebuild Britain, in his speech to Labour’s Annual Conference tomorrow. 

“The politics of national renewal are collective,” Starmer will say. “They involve a shared struggle. A project that says, to everyone, this will be tough in the short-term, but in the long-term – it’s the right thing to do for our country.”

The government has faced considerable public and media criticism over some of its early decisions, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s means-testing of pensioners’ winter fuel allowance. Starmer will argue that the dire state of the British state’s finances mean Labour has to “take tough long-term decisions now”. 

“Our project has not and never will change,” he is expected to say. “I changed the Labour Party to restore it to the service of working people. And that is exactly what we will do for Britain. But I will not do it with easy answers. I will not do it with false hope.

“Just because we all want low taxes and good public services, does not mean that the iron law of properly funding policies can be ignored,” he will argue. “We have the seen the damage that does, and I will not let that happen again.”

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Starmer will say Labour wants “a Britain built to last, built with respect and built with pride.” The last Tory government left three “black holes”, he will say. 

Alongside the financial shortfall of £22 billion in unfunded spending commitments, they also created a “societal black hole” with “decimated public services leaving communities held together by little more than good will”.The Conservative governments also created a “political black hole” of widespread distrust in politics, the Prime Minister will argue. 

By contrast, Labour has to provide a “government of service”. That government “must act in everything it does to show – to the working people of this country, that politics can be a force for good, that it can be on the side of truth and justice, and that it can secure a better life for your family through the steady but uncompromising work of service.”

Starmer will say Labour has already got doctors “back in theatre” and ended the ban on onshore wind projects.

He will point to a list of measures the government will take soon as evidence that it is moving rapidly to change the country. These include planning reform, ending no-fault evictions, and creating several new public bodies: Great British Energy, Border Security Command, and a National Wealth Fund.

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