Starmer calls Reform’s policy on immigration ‘racist’ and says Farage’s party would ‘tear country apart’ – Labour conference live
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?
Starmer says:
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.
They 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
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Results announced of priority motions ballot
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What commentators are saying about Starmer’s BBC interview, and describing Reform UK’s immigration policy as racist
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Scotland being held back by ‘tired and out of touch SNP’, Sarwar says
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Alan Miliburn warns there is risk of state services being ‘overwhelmed’ without more focus on problem prevention
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Attorney general Lord Hermer rejects suggestions he is blocking attempts to stop ECHR being misused
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Anas Sarwar suggests Starmer should ‘stop being shy’ of promoting UK government’s successes
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Anthony Albanese says Labor in Australia has shown patriotism can by ‘truly progressive force’
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Reed says housebuilding will start in at least 3 new town locations before
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Modern Tories like Jenrick don’t have ‘values system’ like old-style Conservatives, Labour’s general secretary claims
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Labour members welcome Starmer’s decision to describe Reform UK’s immigration policy as racist
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Armed forces families and veterans to get priority for some housing built on surplus MoD land under ‘Forces First’ plan
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Badenoch claims Starmer’s ‘manifesto stands’ interview answer implies VAT may rise in budget
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Labour activists applaud Angela Rayner as Reed calls her ‘true working class hero’
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Reform UK accuses Starmer of describing its supporters as racist – despite PM saying he wasn’t
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Anas Sarwar says he, not Starmer, will lead Labour’s campaign in next year’s Holyrood elections
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Steve Reed says he does not think Unite will disaffiliate from Labour, despite Sharon Graham saying it could
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Starmer thanks campaigners as he opens conference saying Hillsborough law show government ‘on side of justice’
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Government identifies sites for 12 new towns
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Starmer’s BBC interview – snap verdict
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Starmer says goverment will restrict spending on taxi rides for asylum seekers in hotels after huge bills revealed
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Starmer says he has ‘for some time’ thought left wrong to ignore concerns about illegal immigration
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Starmer brushes off criticism, saying it’s part of ‘job description’ and he’ll be judged on his 5-year record
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Starmer denies putting donkey field he bought for his parents into trust, after report claims he did, with potential tax benefits
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‘Manifesto stands’, Starmer says, when asked he remains committed to election commitment not to raise VAT
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Starmer says Reform’s indefinite leave to remain policy immoral and ‘racist’
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Starmer says Reform UK’s plan to scrap indefinite leave to remain for migrants who have it would ‘tear country apart’
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Starmer stresses he always said turning Britain around would take time, in response to questions about poor Labour polling
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Steve Reed says he is confident Starmer will lead Labour into next election, after poll suggests members want him replaced
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53% of Labour members want new leader before election, poll suggests
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Shabana Mahmood says migrants who want indefinite leave to remain should have to be contributing to communities
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Starmer calls on Labour to stop ‘navel-gazing’ and join ‘fight of our times’ as Labour conference begins
Helena Horton
Helena Horton is a Guardian environment reporter.
Labour needs to up its messaging on the climate emergency and the need for clean energy or it will cede ground to Reform UK, the chair of the Commons energy committee has said.
Speaking on a More In Common Panel on solar power, Bill Esterson warned:
I just want to start by talking about the climate threat, because it’s increasingly struck me that we talk about the clean power agenda, we talk about what we’re doing in energy, but we don’t talk as much as we used to [about the climate threat]. I feel that’s perhaps why those who are peddling misinformation and returning to outright climate denial are making are having traction.
Michael Shanks, energy minister and Ed Miliband’s right-hand man in the department, said they would make their messaging clearer. He told the panel:
While we’ll talk a lot about the energy security arguments and about jobs, and we’re bringing down bills, we will double down as a government on being very clear that tackling the climate crisis is a priority for us now, not a future threat, but a very present reality.
He said that his goal of decarbonising the electricity grid by 2030 was “really difficult” but “absolutely still achievable” and added there will be upcoming legislation from his department on planning reform to get infrastructure projects built.
Esterson added the public have a “high degree of impatience” about bills not going down, and added: “We’ve got to get on getting the message out that we deliver.”
He said the energy department is doing a good job of getting the message out but said “the whole of government needs to be doing that too”.
Results announced of priority motions ballot
The Labour conference has just adjourned for the day. Before it wrapped up, the results of the priorities ballot were read out – naming the 14 motion subjects that have been chosen for debate, out of the 46 submitted.
The top seven from constituency Labour parties were:
Animal welfare
Cleaning up our communties
High streets
NHS dentistry
Skills
Violence against women and girls, misogyny and domestic abuse
Water
And the top seven from trade unions and other affliates were:
AI and our rights
Guaranteed hours
Industrial energy prices
Public sector workers
Public spending
Staffing in adult social care
Subsidiary companies and insourcing
What commentators are saying about Starmer’s BBC interview, and describing Reform UK’s immigration policy as racist
Here is some more comment on Keir Starmer’s BBC interview this morning, and his decision to call Reform UK’s immigration policy racist.
Commentators on the left are generally enthusiastic.
From the LBC presenter James O’Brien
This is good (for once). Farage has to stay front & centre for almost 4 more years & I don’t see how he can without edging ever closer to the National Front credo that’s always animated him. For now, Starmer must wait until he’s *blatantly* racist before using the term. Otherwise it loses power 1/2
A thing to watch for, discourse-wise, is racism-deniers & facilitators in ‘mainstream’ media trying to detoxify ideas that have been beyond the mainstream pale since the Eighties. The Liddles & Littlejohns openly relish the opportunity that Farage offers them to remove what’s left of their masks.
From Atul Hatwal, editor of the Labour Uncut website
I thought the Friday Starmer speech was inadequate in terms of meeting the moment. Felt like it was drafted to respond to the Robinson march, basically ignored Reform’s mass deportation plan. Much better this morning, finally called it right ‘racist and immoral’
From Jonathan Portes, an economics professor and immigration specialist
Exactly the right language and tone from Starmer here -no nonsense about “legitimate concerns” or weasel words about cost/practicality. Now government needs to put his money where the PM’s mouth is (in policy terms)
From Adam Bienkov from Byline Times
The Prime Minister’s condemnation of Nigel Farage’s racist and immoral mass deportation plans has come far too late for many in his party
james O’brien bluesky
From Paul Mason, the broadcaster, writer and campaigner
This is probably Starmer‘s finest statement of principle since he’s been PM – the creeps outside shouting about Fabianism need to be defeated, not appeased
But Fraser Nelson, the former Spectator editor who now writes a column for the Times and a Substack blog, argues that Starmer has made a mistake. He recently made a documentary for Channel 4 about Reform UK, and it included an interview with Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP who fought off a threat from the BNP in her Barking and Dagenham constituency (helped by a young Morgan McSweeney, now the PM’s chief of staff). Nelson says Hodge gave him a quote explaining why Starmer may have made an error. On in a post on his Substack he says:
I interviewed [Hodge] for the film, and we didn’t get to use much of it. Which is a shame because she made some very interesting points on the r-bomb [calling someone racist]. [Hodge said:] “Throughout that whole four-year period of campaigning against the BNP, I never called anybody a racist. The moment you do, you belittle their concerns about the impact of immigration on their community and unfairness coming into the system (as to who got a council home and who didn’t). If I had accused them of being racist, I would simply have driven them even further into the BNP camp because they would have felt offended that I didn’t really understand their concerns.” …
This dynamic – that a challenger party is strengthened when attacked by a larger rival – is important. It is a dial that can be moved by the challenger: you trigger them. Say or do something to get them talking about you: preferably in hyperbolic tones. This is the basic art of populist war, which Donald Trump mastered because the Democrats rose to the bait every time. This explains the effect of shock-tactics in election campaigns – Farage’s HIV/immigrant line in 2017, his Sunak/D-Day line in 2024 and his Sarwar/Pakistani line in Hamilton. Yes, condemnation comes, but with it, attention. And if you’re attacked for making a point that most voters agree with, it’s a net plus.
So dropping the r-bomb may be gratifying for Farage’s opponents to use. It may rally the base in the week of a conference. But as Baroness Hodge says, doing so when there is no grounds for it risks diminish you – and bolstering your opponent. It could well be that Reform’s opponents keep playing into its hands.
Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images
Scotland being held back by ‘tired and out of touch SNP’, Sarwar says
While most speakers at the Labour conference have singled out Reform UK for special criticism today, Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, and Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader were also withering about the SNP.
In his speech Alexander said:
The SNP, as a nationalist party, is dedicated to making Scotland independent – everyone understands that.
But the harsh truth is that if you wake up every morning thinking: “What can I do today to move Scotland closer to independence?” that means you start the day focussed on difference, division and grievance.
In today’s world of political, economic and technological turmoil that approach is letting Scotland down.
Now is the time to focus on building not breaking, on cooperation not conflict, on working together not pulling apart.
We need and deserve a first minister fully committed to solidarity and not separation to ensure Scotland’s aspirations are backed by the UK’s strength.
That’s is why the next first minister has to be someone who will put the people of Scotland first.
And this is what Sarwar said about the SNP.
In Scotland we are being held back by a tired and out of touch SNP government.
Look at the contrast.
In England under Labour, NHS waiting lists are falling.
In Scotland under the SNP they are still rising – with 1 in 6 Scots on an NHS waiting list.
Here patients are being seen quicker. But not in Scotland.
Do you know that there are more people waiting over two years on an NHS waiting list in Glasgow alone than in the whole of England?
Here schools are now recovering after a decade and a half of Tory misrule. While under the SNP ours are falling down the international league tables.
Here the Labour government is getting spades in the ground to build new homes, while in Scotland the SNP are failing to deal with a national housing emergency.
A UK Labour government is returning neighbourhood policing to local communities.
But in Scotland, under the SNP, police numbers are cut and our police stations are closing.
Alan Miliburn warns there is risk of state services being ‘overwhelmed’ without more focus on problem prevention
Rowena Mason
Rowena Mason is the Guardian’s Whitehall editor.
Alan Milburn, the lead non-executive director at the Department of Health and former Labour cabinet minister, had a stark warning about the state of public services at a Tony Blair Institute fringe meeting.
He said:
The truth is unless we get upstream of some of these issues – family breakdown, knife crime, divisions in communities and, frankly, health – then the system will just be overwhelmed. The state will be overwhelmed. You can see it already. The law of supply and demand isn’t working.
He said Donald Trump was right that the west would need to spend more on defence and meanwhile the NHS, social care and infrastructure and other public services had increasing demands.
He said there is a “limit to how much you can tax and how much you can borrow … and it is not even about the bond market, it’s about people”.
Milburn said the current situation was “not sustainable” and solving it would require a “mindset change” to shift towards spending money on prevention of problems before they get acute.
Attorney general Lord Hermer rejects suggestions he is blocking attempts to stop ECHR being misused
Aletha Adu
Political correspondent
Lord Hermer, the attorney general, has pushed back against claims from colleagues that he is standing in the way of reforming Britain’s human rights framework, insisting that “good lawyers are not blockers, they are enablers.”
Speaking at a fringe event at Labour conference, Hermer said he looked forward to working with the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to “transform” the asylum and immigration system, promising a “world-class litigation strategy” that would scrutinise every stage of the process “from caseworker decisions through to supreme court cases”.
He added that the role of lawyers in government was not to dictate policy but to “help [ministers] make the decisions as effectively as they possibly can”, remarks that appear aimed at quelling unease among Labour MPs who believe he should go further on reform of the European convention on human rights (ECHR). Labour has so far ruled out withdrawal from the convention but signalled it wants to be “at the table” in shaping reforms to how it is applied, particularly in asylum cases.
Hermer said many of the problems lay not in Strasbourg, where the European court of human rights is based, but in the UK. He described himself as “completely shocked” to find that Home Office officials did not always attend first-tier tribunals or counter medical evidence presented by applicants.
He argued that failures in casework and appeals had fuelled misconceptions about human rights law, citing the chicken nugget story, a widely misrepresented ECHR case, as “completely false”.
Anas Sarwar suggests Starmer should ‘stop being shy’ of promoting UK government’s successes
Severin Carrell
Scotland editor
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has challenged Keir Starmer and party strategists to “stop being shy” of the UK government’s successes, implying that without a dramatically bolder sales pitch Labour faces obliteration in next year’s Holyrood elections.
In a speech peppered with direct attacks on John Swinney, leader of the “knackered” Scottish National party leader, and “poisonous” Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, Sarwar directly his main message internally.
He repeatedly chided Labour for being too shy on boasting about its achievements – appearing to echo growing concerns within the party and the cabinet Starmer is failing to construct a coherent story about Labour’s policies.
With Scottish Labour has surprised its critics by winning several key byelections, its popularity as measured by opinion polls has plummeted, in line with the UK party’s steep decline.
The latest Norstat poll for the Sunday Times Scotland underscored growing anxiety in Sarwar’s party, by placing Labour third behind reform in a Holyrood constituency vote, at 17% to Reform’s 20%. The SNP are comfortably in the lead at 34%.
Despite the byelection wins, many of Sarwar’s allies fear those findings demonstrate Labour is in deep trouble. Sarwar is seen as being increasingly equivocal about whether he believes Starmer is the right Labour leader.
Sarwar used the word “shy” eight times in his speech, as he drummed home his appeal.
Conference, since getting rid of the Tories last summer, we have begun the work of clearing up their mess, and changing this country for the better.
But let’s be honest, it’s not been easy. It was never going to be. That’s why we need to be more confident in telling our Labour story.
We can’t expect the right-wing press to do our jobs for us. We can’t afford to be shy about the successes we have had.
Or about the positive changes we are making. If we aren’t going to talk about our successes – then no one else will. If we aren’t going to tell our positive story, then people aren’t going to hear it.
Anthony Albanese says Labor in Australia has shown patriotism can by ‘truly progressive force’
Anthony Albanese, the Australian PM and Labor party leader, gave a speech that did not directly refer to Keir Starmer’s leadership difficulties (see 8.59am), but which seemed intended to be as supportive as possible in the circumstances. Speaking as someone who has already won two general elections, he was able to so so with some authority.
Here are the main points he made.
[The labour movement should] should build cohesion and respect and harmony at home. We do that by embracing patriotism as a truly progressive force, by demonstrating that our love of country is what drives us to serve, and also to change it for the better.
This is now Starmer’s core argument. (See 11.23pm.)
For Labour governments, every single day counts because it takes time to turn promises into progress.
It takes time for plans to work and be seen to work. For inflation to fall, wages to rise, new homes to be finished, new energy connected, new hospitals to open, new investments in education to flow into results.
It takes time to tackle problems that have been created over decades. It takes time to repay trust by delivering on commitments, and in doing so, build trust for future action.
It takes time to make change with people and make change work for people, and none of that means we can expect or ask for patience.
But Albanese recognised that governments have to be able to respond to some problems immediately.
The challenges that the world throws at us, from economic turmoil to threats to our national security, never wait, and the action that we need to take on climate change, the work we need to do to seize the jobs and opportunities of clean energy, that cannot wait.
So while governments always need to be able to tell the difference between what’s urgent and what’s important, in the end, we have to do both.
In his BBC interview this morning Starmer said he wanted to be judged by what he achieved over five years. (See 10am.)
We didn’t pretend that we had solved every problem in just three years, but we could point to an economy that was turning the corner, inflation down, wages up, unemployment low, and interest rates starting to fall, and we offered a second term agenda that built on the patient and disciplined work we had done in our first term.
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He said that, if delegates got angry at conference, it was a sign they were taking politics seriously. He said:
The debates that we hold here are not just healthy, they’re essential. They’re a sign of life.
The reason passions run high at our conferences is because we really care, because the stakes are really high, because what happens here really matters.
There has not been much dissent on the conference floor yet – although there was an argument this morning about why some Gaza motions have been disallowed.
We all know this is a time when trust in governments and institutions is under challenge.
We all sense this is an era where our capacity for peaceful disagreement is being tested.
But what I see here in UK Labour, and this man, this leader, this prime minister, my friend, is the same determination that I know lives in every member of the Australian Labor party, an absolute resolve to stand together and defend democracy itself.
These are from Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a thinktank focusing on race, identity and migration, on why he says Keir Starmer was right to describe Reform UK’s indefinite leave to remain policy as racist.
Its wrong & un-British to strip from people the promise that this was their permanent home
Is it racist too? Farage is now exempting 4m European nationals with settled status, 9/10 white, but threatening half a million non-Europeans, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Africa in a similar ethical position
The impact is discriminatory, whatever the intention. The discrimination is avoided by making new rules apply in future and not reneging on past pledges. Farage appears to accept this principle for Europeans, on reflection, but not the Commonwealth yet. How does he explain the difference?
Labour speakers from the platform at conference today have been aimed almost all their fire at Reform UK, with other opposition parties barely getting a mention. This is what Anna Turley, the Labour chair, told the conference about Nigel Farage’s party.
Let’s be clear, the Reform party isn’t new, or different, as they like to claim.
They are a party of recycled Tories with recycled ideas.
And they stand ready to exploit division for their own political gain.
Masquerading as patriots whilst their leader jets to the US to call for trade penalties on the UK.
And on issue after issue – asylum, online safety, or how to pay for their policies they have no serious answer on how to fix things aside from saying they ‘don’t know’.
Conference, that is Reform: cuts, chaos, and trying to turn people against one another.
Anthony Albanese, the Australian PM, is speaking to the conference now. He was introduced by Keir Starmer who described “Albo” as a genuine friend, and described how he turned up at Downing Street on Friday with four tins of Albo beer as a present.
Reed says housebuilding will start in at least 3 new town locations before
In his speech to the conference Steve Reed, the housing secretary, said that housebuilding would start before the next election in at least three of the 12 “new town locations” announced by the government this morning. (See 11.39am.)
He said:
I can announce today that we will go ahead with work in at least 12 locations with Tempsford, Leeds South Bank and Crews Hill identified as three of the most promising sites.
We’ll build homes people feel proud to live in.
Communities with schools, hospitals, good public transport, green spaces on the doorstep, and the investment that brings good, well paid, unionised jobs to the area.
And we’ll work with world-class architects to design each new town with its own character and distinct, unique identity.
We’ll back the builders by streamlining planning rules so local people have a voice but we can get spades in the ground much faster.
So we’ll start building homes in at least three new town locations before the next general election …
When I said ‘build baby build’, I meant it.
In her speech Hollie Ridley, Labour’s general secretary, said that in 2026 the party would be fighting “the Greens with their ‘let’s be all things to all people’ strategy”.
If that is the Greens’ strategy, it seems to be working. The Green party of England and Wales has just announced that its membership has passed 80,000 – an increase of almost 20% since Zack Polanski was elected leader at the start of September.
