Keir Starmer branded Boris Johnson “a trickster who has performed his one trick” by delivering Brexit, as he cast himself as the serious leader Britain needs.
In a conference speech interrupted by repeated heckles by Jeremy Corbyn supporters, the Labour leader urged the party faithful not to “comfort yourself” that the prime minister is “a bad man”.
Instead, he said: “I think he is a trivial man. I think he’s a showman with nothing left to show. I think he’s a trickster who has performed his one trick.
“Once he had said the words ‘Get Brexit Done’ his plan ran out. He has no plan.”
Sir Keir contrasted his record – as a former director of public prosecutions – with Mr Johnson’s pre-Downing Street life as an entertainer on TV shows and maverick columnist.
“Boris Johnson was a guest on Top Gear where, in reference to himself, he said to Jeremy Clarkson ‘you can’t rule out the possibility that beneath the elaborately constructed veneer of a blithering idiot, lurks a blithering idiot’,” he joked.
And, while the future Labour leader was working on the Stephen Lawrence murder case, the Tory leader was “writing an article declaring a war on traffic cones”, he said.
Sir Keir said the country needed answers to big questions such as how to recover from Covid and tackle “the climate crisis, our relationship with Europe, the future of our union”.
“These are big issues, but our politics is so small. These times demand a responsible leader with clear values,” he told the Brighton conference hall.
The Labour leader offered no clues about how Labour would seek to plug gaps in the Brexit deal, beyond saying he believed it is possible to ‘Make Brexit Work’.
“I do see a way forward after Brexit if we invest in our people and our places, if we deploy our technology cleverly and if we build the affordable homes we so desperately need,” he claimed.
But he sought to claim the prime minister’s ‘levelling up’ slogan by – in stark contrast to his predecessors – heaping praise on the Blair and Brown governments.
“Let me offer the Conservative party a lesson in levelling up,” Sir Keir said, adding: “If they want to know how to do it, I suggest they take a look at our record the last time we were in government.
“Hospital waits down, GCSE results up, 44,000 more doctors, 89,000 new nurses, child poverty down 1 million, pensioner poverty down 1 million, rough sleepers down 75 per cent, a National Minimum Wage. You want levelling up? That’s levelling up.”
In one of repeated references to being the son of a toolmaker, Sir Keir said: “Work, care, equality, security. These are the tools of my trade – and with them I will go to work.”
