Keir Starmer put wealth creation and economic growth at the heart of Labour’s manifesto, vowing to “unlock forever” stifled potential.
The Labour leader announced his vision for government at an event at the Co-operative Society headquarters in Manchester, aimed at winning the support of former Conservative voters.
He said, “The way we create wealth is broken. A lot of people are feeling anxious. Wealth creation is our number one priority. If you take nothing else from this today, just remember this: We are pro-business and pro-worker. This is a wealth creation plan.”
Mr Starmer said everywhere he visited he saw “potential being stifled” by a housing shortage, the high cost of living, low wages and children with rotten teeth.
“Britain is out of balance. People are too hard off. Opportunities are not distributed equally,” he said at the launch of his manifesto in Manchester. “Today we put an end to the harmful idea that economic growth is something that is allocated from the few to the many.”
“For the poorest towns and regions, redistribution cannot be a one-word plan.”
Starmer stressed that a Labour government could not turn the situation around immediately, saying: “We don’t have a magic wand.”
Asked why there were no new policies in the manifesto, Starmer said: “This is not pulling rabbits out of a hat. This is not pantomime. I’m running as a prime ministerial candidate, not to run a circus.”
The stripped-down manifesto focused on the party’s five mission points: economic growth, clean energy, halving crime, reforming childcare and education and building the NHS for the future.
The document contained no major policy surprises and was a deliberate contrast to the policy-focused proposals put forward by the Conservatives earlier this week. It reflected Labour’s cautious approach to the election and its reluctance to give the Conservatives a chance to derail their campaign or erode their 20-point lead in the polls.
Mr Starmer criticised the Conservative party, saying Rishi Sunak’s plans would not solve Britain’s problems, no matter how many policies they threw at the wall “in the hope that some of them will work”.
Mocking Nigel Farage, who is standing for Reform UK in Essex, he said: “If you want politics to be like pantomime, I hear Clacton is the place to go.”
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At the start of his speech as Labour leader, Starmer was heckled by protesters who accused him of letting young people down with “Conservative policy as usual”. “We may have been the party of protest five years ago, but now we want to be the party of power,” Starmer replied.
The manifesto was also targeted at former Conservative voters with its business-friendly policies and aimed to restore the party’s economic credentials: it promised not to raise corporation tax, to launch an industrial strategy centred on clean energy, and to implement rapid planning reforms to give developers incentives to build new infrastructure.
He also stressed that Labour would set up a new ethics and integrity commission to set the highest standards in public life.
The party will immediately enact legislation to strip hereditary peers of their right to sit in the second chamber and set the retirement age at 80. It will also impose new requirements for peerage membership and make it easier to remove peers in disrepute.
Mr Starmer has previously said he wants to abolish the “indefensible” House of Lords and replace it with a second chamber, and his manifesto says he will continue to work on alternatives to a second chamber in future but has not said when.
