Starmer says Reform’s indefinite leave to remain policy immoral and ‘racist’
Q: Do you think the Reform UK indefinite leave to remain policy is immoral?
Yes, says Starmer.
He says it is one thing to remove illegal migrants.
But removing people who are settled in the UK is a “completely different thing”, he says.
He says most elections in this country have been between Labour and the Conservatives.
But Reform are different, he says. It is the sort of politics we have seen in France or Germany, he says (implying they are far-right).
Q: Do you think this is a racist policy?
I do think that it is a a racist policy. I do think it is immoral. It needs to be called out for what it is.
But Starmer says he is not saying people who are considering voting for Reform are racist. They are people “frustrated” by the lack of change, he says.
UPDATE: Starmer said:
It is one thing to say we’re going to remove illegal migrants, people who have no right to be here. I’m up for that.
It is a completely different thing to say we are going to reach in to people who are lawfully here and start removing them. They are our neighbours.
They’re people who work in our economy. They are part of who we are. It will rip this country apart.
Asked if Reform were trying to appeal to racists, Starmer said:
No, I think there are plenty of people who either vote Reform or are thinking of voting Reform who are frustrated.
“hey had 14 years of failure under the Conservatives, they want us to change things.
They may have voted Labour a year ago, and they want the change to come more quickly. I actually do understand that.
Key events
Starmer says he has ‘for some time’ thought left wrong to ignore concerns about illegal immigration
In his interview Starmer was asked about the speech he gave on Friday in which he said the left had been wrong on immigration.
Asked when he realised the left had been wrong on illegal immigration, he said this had been his view “for some time”. He said that he had been to Oldham to discuss people’s concerns about immigrations soon after being elected as an MP (when he was a shadow immigration minister under Jeremy Corbyn), and he suggested that had influenced his views.
During his interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Keir Starmer also defended his plans for a digital ID scheme.
Asked what difference it would make, he said:
The difference is this is on point of starting, not a retrospective exercise as it now is. It is an automatic collection of the information by the government so we know exactly who is working in our economy, and it will help us enforce the rules that are there.
But there’s no point people saying to me, ‘why do we need it?’ when we all acknowledge there is a problem people are working illegally in our economy. It is amongst the reasons that people want to come to the United Kingdom, we have to deal with that.
I made a pledge that we would do whatever was necessary, use whatever tools were available to deal with illegal migration. I intend to do so.
Starmer brushes off criticism, saying it’s part of ‘job description’ and he’ll be judged on his 5-year record
Kuenssberg ended her interview by asking about Andy Burnham, and the leadership.
Starmer said Burnham was doing a very good job as mayor of Greater Manchester.
Q: He is not the only person raising comments about your leadership.
Comments about leaders and leadership are part and parcel of being in politics.
It is the bread and butter of politics, every leader get its, it always comes up, particularly at conference. It’s in the job description.
I don’t focus on that. I focus on what have we got to get done.
Q: Some people are desperately worried. I have spoken to many people [Kuenssberg wrote up the findings from the conversations here] and there is deep concern about how you are doing your job. Is it wise to stick your fingers in your ears.
Starmer said:
People are entitled to their views and I’m not sticking my fingers in my ear in the slightest.
What I am saying is that it is important to keep focusing on what it is that we are delivering, and saying, absolutely in clear terms, the difference it makes to people’s lives.
That Hillsborough law means that thousands of people, whether it’s the 97 [people killed at Hillsborough] or Grenfell or Windrush or Horizon or infected blood and all the other scandals, will have a degree of justice, that other people will never have to go through that again.
Starmer says at the next election he will be judged on three things.
One, have we improved living standards? Do people genuinly feel better off? Two, have we improved public services? Is the NHS in a better place, and people can feel it. And, three, do people feel safe and secure in their home, in their neighbourhood, and that their country is secure.
Starmer said he would be happy to be judged on that basis.
It’s a five-year mandate, and I will be judged at the end of that five years, and quite right too.
I just need the space and get on and do what we need to do, and do those three things above all else.
Q: What is your message to your party?
Starmer said now is not the time for navel-gazing.
It’s the same line he used in the Sunday Times. (See 8.07am.)
I am saying we have got the fight of our lives ahead of us because we’ve got to take on Reform and we’ve got to beat them. So now is not the time for introspection or navel-gazing.
There is a fight that we are all in together, and every single member of our party and our movement – actually, everyone who cares about what this country is, whether they vote Labour or otherwise – it’s the fight of our lives for who we are as a country. We need to be in that fight, united not navel-gazing. I’m absolutely clear in my mind about that, and that’s what I will be talking about at conference.
Starmer denies putting donkey field he bought for his parents into trust, after report claims he did, with potential tax benefits
Kuenssberg asked Starmer about this story in the Sunday Times. It says:
Sir Keir Starmer gave land to his parents via a trust that meant their estates would never pay inheritance tax on the asset whatever its eventual value, according to legal experts.
The prime minister’s decision to place a seven-acre field within the structure meant its value was excluded from his parents’ estate, of which he was a beneficiary, when they died.
At the time, Starmer could not have known whether the estate would end up avoiding the tax and, if so, by how much. This is because any payment depended on the total wealth his parents left behind and the tax-free allowance available to the estate at the time.
He insists the trust made no difference to the liability and that he gave them the land solely to help them. Yet No 10 repeatedly declined to say why he could not have simply given them the land, or kept it while permitting them to use it.
Starmer said the story was wrong. He did not put the field into a trust. He said he bought a field for his parents because they loved donkeys, his mother was very ill, and towards the end of her life she enjoyed being able to look at the donkeys in the field next to their house. It cost him £20,000, he said.
‘Manifesto stands’, Starmer says, when asked he remains committed to election commitment not to raise VAT
Kuenssberg is now asking about tax.
She repeatedly asks if he will rule out raising VAT.
Starmer ignores the question several times.
Then he says he cannot discuss the budget.
Kuenssberg says in the past he has been willing to say that manifesto commitments not to raise income tax, employee national insurance or VAT still apply.
Starmer just replies: “The manifesto stands.”
Kuenssberg asks him to clarify what that means. It could just mean it stands today, she says.
Starmer says Labour put the manifesto to the electorate, it was elected, and it stands. He is not going into the detail of the budget.
This line, ‘‘the manifesto stands”, is new wording. It is hard to tell from this exchange whether Starmer is saying this because the budget will involve some shift on VAT that might breach the promise, or whether he has just chosen a new way of saying he will stick to the commitments.
One policy that would be an arguable breach of the commitment would be not raising the main rate of VAT, but extending the scope of it, so that items now coverered by a zero rate or a lower rate have to pay a higher rate. Last week the Institute for Government thinktank proposed this.
UPDATE: Starmer said:
We put that manifesto before the electorate. We got elected and that manifesto stands.
I’m not going to go through the details of what may be in the budget.
Obviously, it’s two months away and no prime minister and no chancellor would ever sit here and indicate two months out what may or may not be in the budget.
Starmer says Reform’s indefinite leave to remain policy immoral and ‘racist’
Q: Do you think the Reform UK indefinite leave to remain policy is immoral?
Yes, says Starmer.
He says it is one thing to remove illegal migrants.
But removing people who are settled in the UK is a “completely different thing”, he says.
He says most elections in this country have been between Labour and the Conservatives.
But Reform are different, he says. It is the sort of politics we have seen in France or Germany, he says (implying they are far-right).
Q: Do you think this is a racist policy?
I do think that it is a a racist policy. I do think it is immoral. It needs to be called out for what it is.
But Starmer says he is not saying people who are considering voting for Reform are racist. They are people “frustrated” by the lack of change, he says.
UPDATE: Starmer said:
It is one thing to say we’re going to remove illegal migrants, people who have no right to be here. I’m up for that.
It is a completely different thing to say we are going to reach in to people who are lawfully here and start removing them. They are our neighbours.
They’re people who work in our economy. They are part of who we are. It will rip this country apart.
Asked if Reform were trying to appeal to racists, Starmer said:
No, I think there are plenty of people who either vote Reform or are thinking of voting Reform who are frustrated.
“hey had 14 years of failure under the Conservatives, they want us to change things.
They may have voted Labour a year ago, and they want the change to come more quickly. I actually do understand that.
Starmer says Reform UK’s plan to scrap indefinite leave to remain for migrants who have it would ‘tear country apart’
Q: What is patriotic renewal?
Starmer gives examples of what the government is doing to get the economy going.
And he says Reform UK would tear the country apart.
He highlights Nigel Farage’s plan to rescind indefinite leave to remain from migrants who have already been granted this status.
I want to serve the whole of our country, our beautiful, tolerant, diverse country …
Reform not believe in that country. They want to tear that country apart. What was said last week about deporting migrants who are lawfully here, who’ve been here for years working in our hospitals, in our schools, running businesses, our neighbours and reform say they want to deport them. That would tear our country apart.
(This is a much harder line than the one Labour was using against the Reform policy last week, when it focused on practical flaws in what Farage was proposing.)
He also accuses Reform of “cosying up to Putin”.
Starmer stresses he always said turning Britain around would take time, in response to questions about poor Labour polling
Keir Starmer is being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC now.
Q: How much trouble are you in?
Starmer says the government has done “a lot”, and accomplished “great things”.
He lists a series of achievements.
Q: Poll suggest Labour would win fewer than 100 seats if there were an election now.
Starmer says he always said it will take time.
He will be judged at the next election by whether people feel better off.
Q: Do you accept you are in trouble?
Starmer says he is focusing on delivering. He mentions the Hillsborough law.
Steve Reed says he is confident Starmer will lead Labour into next election, after poll suggests members want him replaced
Steve Reed, the housing secretary, was interviewed by Trevor Phillips on Sky News this morning.
Asked about the Survation poll for LabourList (see 8.59am),, Reed said he was confident that Keir Starmer would lead the party into the next election. He said:
[Starmer has] been written off many, many times over his career.
People said that Keir Starmer could not win a general election for Labour. He picked this party up off the floor and he led us to a landslide victory in the general last year.
53% of Labour members want new leader before election, poll suggests
More than half of Labour party members want a new leader before the general election, a new poll suggests.
The Survation poll, commissioned by the website LabourList, found that 53% of members said the party should get a new leader before the general election, and only 31% said Keir Starmer should stay in place.
The same poll found that 64% of Labour members said they thought Starmer had governed badly since entering office.
And it found that 65% of them think the party is heading in the wrong direction.
Commenting on the poll, which surveyed 1,254 LabourList readers who say they are party members, Emma Burnell, the LabourList editor, said:
The phrase ‘make or break conference speech’ is wildly overused in politics. So much so, that you try to reach for other things to say.
But the plain truth is Starmer has to do an awful lot this week to convince his party he has a plan to turn things around and the capability to achieve a revival of Labour’s fortunes.
Labour members will need to see a plan for change that goes beyond a slogan. But they will also be looking for a passionate messenger who can sell that plan to the country. It’s a tall ask, but one Starmer knows he must deliver on.
Party membership polling can sometimes be unreliable. But these findings are not incompatible with recent anecdotal reporting about party activists and some MPs being very concerned about how the party is doing.
Shabana Mahmood says migrants who want indefinite leave to remain should have to be contributing to communities
Although the Sunday Times got an interview with Keir Starmer, there was more news in the Sun on Sunday’s interview with Shabana Mahmood. Here are the main lines. Mahmood was speaking to the paper’s political editor, Kate Ferguson.
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Mahmood said that she wanted to impose new conditions on migrants who want indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK, requiring them to show that they are making a contribution to communities. She told the paper:
I am looking at how to make sure that settlement in our country – long term settlement, indefinite leave to remain – is linked not just to the job you are doing, the salary you get, the taxes you pay, [but] also the wider contribution you are making to our communities.
She said she was inspired by the example of her parents, who came to Birminghan fom Kashmir in the 1960s and 1970s. She said:
They didn’t just come to work – they settled, they made a contribution to the local community, they were volunteers, they got involved in local politics. They did more than simply work and earn a salary.
Last week Reform UK announced that it wants to abolish the ILR status altogether. Mahmood is not proposing that.
But the government has already said it wants to extend the amount of time migrants normally have to wait until they can apply for ILR, from five years to 10 years. And, in some respects, Mahmood’s proposals in the Sun in Sunday echo the plans announced by Kemi Badenoch earlier this year. Badenoch also said people should have to wait 10 years before they can claim ILR, and she said it should only be given to people who are net contributors to the state, and that people who have claimed benefits should not qualify.
As Patrick Maguire reported in the Times last week, in Labour circles “contribution” is now fashionable as an idea that could be applied to public service reform. Mahmood’s interview reflects this thinking.
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Mahmood said that the European convention on human rights and refugee conventions were being “used in a way that was never intended” and said she would propose reforms before Christmas. The Home Office is working on new guidance to the courts on how they should interprete two of the articles in the convention.
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She said her “jaw hit the floor” when she learned last week about the Home Office spending £600 on a taxi journey for a migrant with a GP appointment a long way from the hotel where they were staying. She ordered a review after a BBC investigation highlighted this.
I love the St George’s flag and I love the Union Jack. They are flags that I see myself reflected in.And where our flags are being used as a symbol of unity I’m all for it. I would like to see more of our flags actually on our civic institutions …
I think the thing that we have to be careful about is the motives of some – not all – but some of the people that are putting up the flags. They are speaking to nationalism. And I’m a patriot, not a nationalist.
In my vision of patriotism, you can be English in this country and have 1,000 years of history here, or you can be English and look like me. And no one, not Tommy Robinson or anybody else can take my English identity away from me.
Mahmood was referring to concerns that some of those who have been putting up flags are anti-migrant, or racist.
Other ministers asked about flags have declined to accept there is anything negative about the flag-flying trend.
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Mahmood said that Margaret Thatcher was one of her political heroes. In a quickfire question round, asked to name her heroes, Mahmood said:
I have two women who I look up to for their strength and their steel, and that’s Benazir Bhutto and Margaret Thatcher.
Mahmood probably won’t be using this line in her speech to the conference.
Starmer calls on Labour to stop ‘navel-gazing’ and join ‘fight of our times’ as Labour conference begins
Good morning. The Labour party’s four-day annual conference starts this morning in Liverpool and the headline on the Sunday Times splash sums up the challenge facing Keir Starmer: can he pull things round?
In party politics terms, what that means is: can Labour recover its lead in the polls? At least, can it do that in time for the next general election? And, in practice that means, can Labour see of the threat from Reform UK. “I think we can pull this round,” Starmer told the Sunday Times, in an interview with its political editor, Caroline Wheeler.
The next four days won’t settle this question. Sometimes political parties get a modest boost in the polls after their party conference, but Labour are about 10 points behind Reform in polls at the moment and no one is expecting them to close that gap this week. But Labour members will be looking for evidence that that party is on the right track. In particular, there are three problems Starmer needs to address. First, he is accused of being a lousy communicator. Will we see any evidence that he is raising his game? Second, he is accused of being not even sure what he wants to communicate in the first place. Commentators, and even some Labour MPs, say they are not clear about the government’s guiding mission. Will we get clarity on that? And, third, voters want clear evidence that Labour is bringing about meaningful change. Will we get policy that ticks that box?
Over the last few weeks some Labour MPs have been talking privately about the benefits of getting a new leader. In his Sunday Times interview, Starmer said the party had to abandon this sort of “navel-gazing”. He said:
It is the fight of our times and we’ve all got to be in it together. We don’t have time for introspection, we don’t have time for navel-gazing. You’ll always get a bit of that at a Labour party conference, but that is not going to solve the problems that face this country.
Once you appreciate the change — in the sense of the division that Reform would bring to our country and the shattering of what we are as a patriotic country — then you realise this is a fight which in the end is bigger than the Labour party.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Steve Reed, the housing secretary, and Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, are interviewed on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.
9am: Keir Starmer is interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Other guests include Alan Johnson, a former Labour home secretary, Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB union, and Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
11am: The conference opens.
11.40am: Hollie Ridley, Labour’s general secretary, speaks. In a session on party business, Ellie Reeves, the national policy forum chair, Anna Turley, the Labour chair, and Bev Craig, leader of Manchester city council and leader of the Labour group on the LGA (Local Government Association) also speak.
12.35pm: Steve Reed, the housing secretary, speaks.
2.05pm: Anthony Albanese, the Australian PM and leader of the Australian Labor party, speaks.
2.30pm: Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, speaks.
2.30pm: Peter Kyle, the business secretary, takes part in a Social Market Foundation Q&A at a fringe meeting.
2.45pm: Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, speaks to the conference.
3pm: Jo Stevens, the Welsh secretary, speaks.
3.15pm: Eluned Morgan, the Welsh first minister, speaks.
4pm: Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary speaks at a fringe meeting.
4.30pm: David Lammy, the deputy PM, takes part in a Financial Times Q&A at a fringe meeting.
5pm: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes part in an LCEF (Labour Climate and Environment Forum) Q&A at a fringe meeting.
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