Keir Starmer tells Labour to 'get serious about winning' as he blasts Boris Johnson for not being 'up to the job'

Sir Keir Starmer today told Labour to “get serious about winning” and said the party must change before people will trust it with security and their money.

Drawing a line under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, he warned there is “a lot to do” before

voters will trust Labour again with the keys to 10 Downing Street.

“Never again will Labour go into an election not being trusted,” he declared in his first conference speech as leader. “On national security, with your job, with your community and with your money. That’s what being under new leadership means.”

Sir Keir made his speech in Doncaster, symbolising the importance of regaining the trust and votes of families in the former “Red Wall” who lost faith in Mr Corbyn’s left-wing agenda and turned to the Conservatives in the 2019 election.

He attacked Boris Johnson as “not up to the job” and vowed to be more competent and more principled than the current PM.

He pointed to his record as Director of Public Prosecutions to show he was a more credible national leader. “This is the big difference between the Prime Minister and me,” he said. “While Boris Johnson was writing flippant columns about bendy bananas, I was defending victims and prosecuting terrorists.

“While he was being sacked by a newspaper for making up quotes, I was fighting for justice and the rule of law.”

An exclusive poll by Ipsos MORI for the Evening Standard today reveals that Labour is three points behind Mr Johnson’s Conservatives. But, on a swathe of leadership ratings, Sir Keir has overtaken the Prime Minister.

“I didn’t come into politics to be in opposition and neither did you,” he said, hammering home his message of modernisation. “I came into politics to change lives.

“But you don’t get the permission to act unless the public trusts you. And we still have a lot to do to gain that trust. I don’t underestimate the work that will be needed.”

Sir Keir said he had already made a start at changing the party by getting tough with members who make anti-Semitic comments.

“It’s time to get serious about winning. That means we have to change and that is what we are doing. This is a party under new leadership," he said.

“As I promised on my first day as leader we will root out the antisemitism that has infected our party. We’re making progress. And we will root it out, once and for all. We’re becoming a competent, credible Opposition. But that’s not enough.”

With the traditional conference format abandoned because of coronavirus restrictions, his words were beamed nationwide over the internet.

Sir Keir laid into the Prime Minister for being cavalier. “A crisis reveals character like nothing else,” he said. “And I think we’ve learnt something about this Prime Minister. Tory backbenchers know it. His Cabinet knows it. We all know it. He’s just not serious. He’s just not up to the job.”

The Labour leader said the twin crises over Covid-19 testing and Brexit were due to the PM “wishing away” problems instead of knuckling down to master the detail. “He kept wishing away the problems with testing, pretending they didn’t exist. He wished away the problems with the Irish border then, when he finally realised he’d signed up to a deal he barely understood, he lashed out and decided to break international law.”

He also accused the “incompetence” of Mr Johnson’s Government of "holding Britain back”.

“I’ve tried to be constructive. I appreciate that these are unprecedented times and that governing is difficult. I’ve tried to be fair, to give the Government the benefit of the doubt," he said. “But now, with one of the highest death rates in the world, and on the threshold of one of the deepest recessions anywhere, I’m afraid there is no doubt.

“This Government’s incompetence is holding Britain back.”

He added that a second national lockdown would be a “sign of Government failure, not an act of God” that would take an “immense toll” on public health and the economy.

He said: “There should be nothing inevitable about a second lockdown. It would be a sign of Government failure, not an act of God. We need a national effort to prevent a national lockdown.”

Sir Keir said Labour would only win if it was seen to focus on the future, not the past. He remarked there had only been three Labour Premier’s since World War II, and each won because they had an agenda to modernise Britain.

“In 1945, Attlee had to build a society fit to reward the sacrifices of the war. In 1964, Wilson had to make the “white heat of technology” work for working people. In 1997, Blair wanted to extend the new era of opportunity to everyone.

“The lesson is: Don’t look back. Look to the future. We need to be thinking about the questions of 2024 and the 2030s not the questions of the past.”

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