‘We’re back’: MPs react after Keir Starmer delivers defiant conference speech

MPs have responded with full-throated support following the Prime Minister’s keynote speech at Labour Party conference.

In the speech, a defiant Keir Starmer set out the choice voters face between Reform and Labour and hit out at Nigel Farage for his lack of positivity about Britain.

Business minister Chris Bryant said the speech was “great” and said: “I like the stuff about further education, rather than just higher education – and I liked all the stuff about drawing a distinction between legitimate concerns about migration and racism.”

Loughborough MP Jeevun Sandher said Starmer delivered a “really good speech… setting out the political battle we are having, which is around who we are as a nation”.

He said: “On the other side of it is the politics that goes ‘we can solve all our problems by attacking someone’. You see that with Farage who says all your problems are because of immigrants, and you see it with the far left as well with Zarah Sultana and Corbyn.

“That’s the difference where we are – really proud of our party, really proud of Keir”.

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Mary Creagh, MP for Coventry East and under-secretary of state for nature, said the speech was “really inspirational”.

“He [Keir] spoke to the room, but he also spoke to the nation. I think he’s talking about the quiet kindnesses and neighbourliness that you have in your community, and speaking to the vast majority of decent people in this country.

“Renewing, rebuilding, security, NHS Online – all those things were designed to speak not just to the Labour faithful in the room, but to the people in communities like mine in Coventry East.”

PPS to Pat McFadden Gordon McKee said Starmer’s speech was “really uplifting”.

“It was a good challenge to Nigel Farage and everything he’s said about what Farage would do to the country is absolutely bang on.

“That’s the choice. It’s either Labour or Reform – we’re trying to renew Britain and they want to take Britain back to a time that never really existed.

“I was really proud of everything he said about Britain’s diversity and the sort of shocking nature of what Reform are proposing.”

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Newly-appointed migration minister Mike Tapp also welcomed the speech, which saw hundreds of people in the auditorium waving UK, English, Scottish and Welsh flags and said: “We’ll get behind the flag in the right way”.

MP for Bristol North East Damien Egan said that the Prime Minister did “very well” and said: “He put the challenge out there about what he stands for – everyone was clapping so much, I didn’t get to hear the whole list of achievements!

“I like these moments because you see Keir at PMQs and everything like that – that’s all quite reactive. You get to see these set piece moments where we can all listen and he gives us an opportunity to come into his mind and what he’s thinking.”

Florence Eshalomi, chair of the housing, communities and local government committee, also welcomed the speech and said: “He’s had his Weetabix. We’re back.”

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