Sir Keir Starmer has lashed out at Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, claiming they behave like Donald Trump.
The Labour leader launched a blistering attack on the Tories to mark the fourth anniversary of his own party’s electoral wipeout under Jeremy Corbyn.
In a pitch to disaffected Conservative voters, he laid out the “complete overhaul” Labour has undergone since 2019. And he said the Tories under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and now Rishi Sunak have “moved in the opposite direction”.
Sir Keir said Britain has always been a “practical nation” in the past, even under Tory governments.
“But these aren’t Churchillian tourists anymore, if anything they behave more and more like Donald Trump,” he added.
The Labour leader said: “They look at the politics of America, and they want to bring it here. It’s all woke, woke, woke, wedge, wedge wedge, divide, divide, divide.
“People can’t afford Christmas.”
Sir Keir Starmer during a speech in Milton Keynes
Sir Keir also attacked the Conservatives’ record on the NHS and crime, saying crimes are going unsolved and people do not know if ambulances will come when called.
And he vowed Labour would no longer indulge in “performance art” policies such as the Rwanda scheme, but would indulge in “the mundane stuff, the bureaucratic stuff”.
“It’s not about wave machines, or armoured jet skis, or schemes like your wonder you know will never work, it’s about doing the basics better,” Sir Keir said.
In a speech from Milton Keynes, the Labour leader appealed directly to Conservative voters, saying: “Only a change of government can bring change to our country.”
Sir Keir also used a Q&A after the speech to confirm the party would scrap Mr Sunak’s flagship Rwanda deportation policy.
He said it is costing a “fortune”, will not work and is “against our values”. But he opened the door to the party considering a similar scheme, where asylum claims could be processed elsewhere, with successful asylum seekers able to return to the UK.
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.”
Elsewhere in the speech, Sir Keir defended his time serving under predecessor Mr Corbyn. “We did lose our way, we lost our way into that 2019 election four years ago today,” he said.
But he went further and appeared to criticise the leadership of other former leaders including Ed Miliband and ex-prime minister Gordon Brown.
Asked about his claim that Labour had taken a “leave of absence from our job description”, “not just under Jeremy Corbyn, but for a while”, Sir Keir insisted he was not critiquing any “particular individual”.
But said “it is a reflection of the fact that we have lost four elections in a row”, including under Mr Brown in 2010.
Tory chairman Greg Holden said: “Once again Sir Keir Starmer showed he is only interested in short-term political positioning, not taking long-term decisions in the national interest.”
