He said that Britain had failed to rebuild following the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, and had stuck with failed policies on globalization, mass immigration, and declining industry and training, creating a country where voters are now seduced by a “tempting path” of so-called easy answers.
But to those who have nothing positive to say about the U.K.’s future, Starmer offered a kaleidoscope of positive images.
“We will fight you with everything we have because you are the enemy of national renewal,” he said, picking out audience members who have delivered for their communities through recycling school uniforms or scrubbing graffiti from “all the way from the South Downs to the Shetland Islands,” before asking, over and over: “Is that broken, Britain?”
Moving on from Labour’s past
In a speech littered with stories of meeting voters including shipbuilders on the River Clyde in Scotland, childcare workers in Nuneaton and a woman worried about immigration in Oldham, Starmer attempted to align his personal story “from a working-class background to this” with the experience of voters across the U.K.
“I owe everything to this country and its values,” he said.
He went on to recount that his father did not feel respected because he worked with his hands as a working class toolmaker, and that when Starmer went to university he felt put on a pedestal — but then went on to proclaim that Tony Blair’s target to send 50 percent of children to university is no longer “right for our times,” and pledged to replace it with a target of two-thirds for universities and apprenticeships.