Labour leadership: Keir Starmer promises to defend party's radical values and win next election

Contender to succeed Jeremy Corbyn officially launches campaign on back of commanding lead in MPs' nominations

Labour leadership contender Keir Starmer was today officially launching his campaign with a promise to defend the party’s “radical values” while transforming it into a force able to win a majority in the 2024 election.

The pledge aims to shore up support in the left of the party for a candidate who has already built up commanding leads in the polls and MPs' nominations, but faces a tough challenge in the hunt for grassroots members' votes from Rebecca Long Bailey, widely viewed as the left’s anointed successor to Jeremy Corbyn.

And the goal of securing power in just four years - a daunting electoral challenge which would require a 124-plus gain in seats in a swing only previously achieved by Tony Blair in 1997 and Clement Attlee in 1945 - serves as a plea to members not select a leader who would indulge in ideological purity at the expense of electability.

In a symbolic gesture to trade unionists, whose affiliated members make up a big chunk of the electorate which will choose the new leader on 4 April, the shadow Brexit secretary chose the birthplace of the British Trade Union Congress in Manchester for his launch event.

Starmer has previously warned Labour not to “oversteer” away from the policy agenda developed under Corbyn in response to last month’s devastating election defeat, and today’s launch sends a further signal that his focus is not on a sharp change in political direction, but on rebuilding trust with voters who turned away from the current leader on 12 December.

Amid fierce debate over whether the election debacle was due to losing touch with voters in Labour’s northern heartlands, a metropolitan focus on the needs of cities over towns or the failure to re-establish the party as an electoral force in Scotland, Starmer insisted he would train Labour’s sights on “every person in the UK whose support we need to win back. England, Scotland and Wales, in towns and cities alike”.

Speaking ahead of the launch at Manchester’s Mechanics Institute, Starmer said: “We have to rebuild people’s trust in Labour as a force for good and real change. We have to take the fight to the Tories and make the case for how our values and ideas can deliver the change Britain so desperately needs.”

He added: “Labour wins when it glimpses the future. That must be our focus over the course of this campaign.

“The challenge for Labour today is to defend our values, retain our radicalism, and to make that relevant to people’s everyday lives. People desperately need and want us to win.

“We have to deliver a programme that will tackle low pay and insecure work, rebuild our public services, empower communities and tackle the climate emergency.”

By Friday, Starmer had established a dominant lead in nominations, securing the backing of 68 MPs and MEPs. Also passing the threshold of 22 nominations were Ms Long Bailey on 26, Lisa Nandy on 24 and Jess Phillips on 22. Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, with 10 signatures, and economics spokesman Clive Lewis, with four, were struggling to remain in the contest beyond Monday's deadline.

Sir Keir warned that the three-month succession contest should not distract Labour’s focus from the 7 May council and mayoral elections in England, which will provide the first real test of the new leader’s appeal to the general public.

Related video: Who will replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader? (Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

“Boris Johnson said that many voters in the North had lent their votes to the Conservatives. We must set ourselves the task of winning those votes back,” he said.

“If elected leader, I will pursue Boris Johnson relentlessly in Parliament. We will connect our opposition in Parliament to Labour’s mass movement and to the wider forces in our country who do not want five more years of Tory misrule. And we will bind that together with an electoral strategy that focuses tirelessly on getting Labour back into government.

“My campaign will be about defending Labour’s radical values and winning for the majority in 2024 – not either one without the other.”

Starmer was being introduced at the Manchester event by Labour peer Doreen Lawrence, having fought for justice for her murdered son Stephen as a human rights lawyer. Before the campaign launch, he was visiting a food bank in Oldham.

Speaking on BBC1's Breakfast, Starmer dismissed suggestions that he was too "centrist" to win the Labour leadership.

"I want the Labour Party to be radical in the sense that we need fundamental change. Frankly, I find all the labels just get in the way," he said.

Unlike Ms Long Bailey, who gave Mr Corbyn 10 out of 10 as a leader and Ms Thornberry who gave him 0 out of 10 for his election-fighting abilities, Sir Keir refused to give him marks out 10 for his leadership.

"Jeremy Corbyn led us through really difficult times as a Labour Party," he said. "He positioned us in the right place on anti-austerity but we lost the election and now he is stepping down. That is the right thing to do.

"I am not going to get into ranking Jeremy Corbyn out of 10. I think it trivialises him. He is a friend and a colleague. I respect him, thank him for what he has done, but we are moving on now."

Sir Keir Starmer vowed personally to take charge of the fight to stamp out antisemitism in the party if he wins the race to succeed Mr Corbyn.

"We should have done more on antisemitism. If you are antisemitic you shouldn't be in the Labour Party," he said.

"What I would do is lead from the top and say it's my responsibility to deal with it. I wouldn't say it's for somebody else. I want the files, I want to know the numbers on my desk so that I can monitor this.

"Only when people who have left our party because of antisemitism feel that they can return will I be truly satisfied that we have dealt with the problem."

Sir Keir said that he had argued within the shadow cabinet for tougher action, with automatic expulsion for anyone found to be antisemitic.

"It seemed to me that if you have been chucked out of the Labour Party for supporting another political party, you should be chucked out for being antsemitic," he said.