Keir Starmer defends serving under Jeremy Corbyn as he insists Labour has ‘changed fundamentally’
Sir Keir Starmer has defended serving under Jeremy Corbyn as he argued Labour had “changed fundamentally” under his leadership.
The Labour leader said the party had not only “lost its way” under Mr Corbyn in the run up to the 2019 election – but had done so “for a while” in an apparent reference to the leadership of Ed Miliband.
Giving a speech in Buckinghamshire, Sir Keir accused the Conservatives of having got into an “indulgent vortex” of infighting over illegal migration as Rishi Sunak faces a crunch vote in the Commons on his Rwanda bill today.
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However, he also criticised his own party for its last election defeat, saying it “took a leave of absence from our job description”.
Sir Keir has repeatedly sought to portray to voters that the Labour Party has changed from when it was led by Mr Corbyn, who now sits as an independent MP after having the parliamentary whip removed.
But the Conservatives have pointed out that Sir Keir served in Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and that he campaigned to make him prime minister.
All eyes are now on an early election
Tamara Cohen
@tamcohen
Sir Keir Starmer’s pitch to disillusioned Tory voters today hammered a theme he can’t talk enough about – that his party has changed.
It now accepts Brexit as cry for change, he said and “understands that working people want success as well as support”. He said Labour would prioritise “secure borders and economic stability”.
Immigration was not one of the five priorities Sir Keir set out at the start of the year – but he has thrown himself into the idea of stopping the boats “without the psychodrama” and without the Rwanda policy.
Labour insists the government’s policy is not only unworkable but “against our values” and will not act as a deterrent to illegal migration.
This chimes with polling earlier this year which suggests most voters doubt the policy will work.
But Labour Party insiders are now trying to make the bigger picture argument at every opportunity – that the party’s priorities have changed after four election defeats.
When I asked Sir Keir when he, as shadow Brexit secretary under Jeremy Corbyn, realised they were headed for disaster, he said the party “lost our way into that 2019 election”.
“When you lose an election that badly, you don’t look at the electorate and say: ‘What on earth were you thinking?'” he said.
“You change your party, and evidence of how far we’ve changed our party is that Jeremy Corbyn won’t be able to stand as a Labour candidate, at the next general election.”
Labour candidates are now intensely watching the government’s migration woes and wondering about an early election – where the change argument will be the one they will make on the doorsteps.
Asked by Sky News if he could tell voters at what point he realised the party was on the “wrong track” and whether he regretted staying in the shadow cabinet, Sir Keir replied that he did not vote for Mr Corbyn to be Labour leader in either 2015 or 2016.
And he added: “I did consider that when as a country we were grappling with Brexit, that I had a responsibility to be an effective person on the frontbench for my party and for the official opposition, along with others who were on the backbenches.”
Sir Keir went on to say that despite the 2019 election representing the party’s worst defeat since 1935, it would be a “mistake” to regard it as the “sole cause of our problems”.
He said Mr Miliband, the current shadow net zero secretary who led the party from 2010 to 2015, was an “important” member of his shadow cabinet but that the party “drifted too far from the core function of serving working people”.
Sir Keir was speaking ahead of a vote in parliament later today in which the prime minister is fighting to save his flagship Rwanda bill.
Mr Sunak hosted an emergency breakfast in Downing Street this morning in a bid to convince right-wing rebels to back the legislation following their initial verdict that it needed “major surgery” to win their approval.
The Safety of Rwanda Bill aims to revive the stalled £290m scheme to deport asylum seekers who arrive by small boat to the east African nation after the Supreme Court ruled it unlawful.
It is seen as a core plank of Mr Sunak’s strategy to stop boat crossings in the Channel.
The Labour leader said that while he believed the Rwanda bill would pass its second reading – albeit with a “lot of shouting and screaming” – if the government did lose Mr Sunak should immediately call a general election.
“The prime minister’s got an 80-seat majority. We shouldn’t even be having a discussion about whether he’s going to get his basic legislation through,” he said.
“Government hasn’t lost a second reading vote since 1986. This is a government with a majority. So I don’t think we should allow them the indulgence of pretending it’s going to be tight and he’s done a brilliant job to get it over the line.”
Asked whether he objected to the Rwanda scheme specifically or if there were potential alternatives for offshoring asylum seekers, Sir Keir said: “There are various schemes, as you know, around the world where individuals are processed, usually en route to their country of destination, elsewhere.
“The Rwanda scheme isn’t one of those. This is a straight deportation scheme in relation to people who’ve already arrived.
“Other countries around the world do have schemes where they divert people on the way and process them elsewhere. That’s a different kind of scheme.
“And look, I’ll look at any scheme that might work.”