Sir Keir Starmer sought to put “security” at the centre of Labour’s general election pitch as he accused Rishi Sunak of being “desperate” in his first big campaign speech. The Leader of the Opposition used the speech in Lancing, West Sussex to try and introduce himself to voters, drawing on his upbringing to argue that he can be trusted to defend the public’s priorities. And he admitted that totemic left-wing policies such as scrapping tuition fees and reversing voter ID laws would not be a priority for an incoming Labour government.
Tanks on Tory lawn Starmer’s speech was delivered in the most English setting imaginable – a small parish council hall in the seaside town of Lancing, on the Sussex coast, with a war memorial outside next to a sign urging residents to help beautify their neighbourhood. The town sits in the East Worthing & Shoreham constituency, which has been held by the Conservatives since its creation in 1997 but has become more marginal in recent years. The Labour leader described his own childhood in the town of Oxted, not far away, which he said was “about as English as it gets, a mix of Victorian red bricks and pebble-dashed semis, while all around you have rolling pastures and the beautiful chalk hills of the North Downs”.
Holding the purse-strings tight Starmer and Rachel Reeves have pushed a message of fiscal discipline hard, and in his speech the leader spent more time talking about “economic stability” than any one of his other .
