Keir Starmer echoes Trump in speech with 'great nation' ambition for 'Broken Britain'

After five months in office, Prime Minister makes defining speech aiming to set his government on course for success

Britain’s Prime Minister has vowed to inject ambition into what he described as a “broken” country that the Labour leader has promised to fix.

Keir Starmer hopes to use the unrestrained speech to reset his government after a turbulent first five months in power plagued by resignations, riots and questions over direction.

After 14 years of Conservative rule, including Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, Britain was “broken, but not beyond repair”, he told party followers in the keynote speech on Thursday. Channelling US president-elect Donald Trump's slogan of Make America Great Again, he said: “Because one thing the British people do know in their bones is that this is a great nation.”

The highly successful home of the British film industry, Pinewood Studios, was chosen as his backdrop, with Mr Starmer hoping its success, from the James Bond movies to the latest Tom Cruise thriller, will inspire others.

The studios, just outside London, could act as a “beacon for change”, he said. The filming hub's workforce of 8,000 “shows the British people that they are a country that can do great things”, he added.

Change is hard

In the candid language that has become a feature of Mr Starmer’s rhetoric, he sent a direct message to his MPs and civil servants to think with ambition.

The change he envisioned would “demand, from Whitehall and Westminster, a profound cultural shift away from declinist mentality, which has become so comfortable with failure that it risks breaking a precious contract with the British people”, he said.

Too many people in Whitehall were “comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline” and had forgotten former US president John F Kennedy’s point that “you choose change, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard”.

He criticised the culture in which people told colleagues “don’t try anything too ambitious”, and promised that "change and reform are coming”.

Managed decline

But there was a long way to go before things could be turned round as the country was on the “turgid path of managed decline”, he said.

He decried the inability to get major building projects approved – largely delayed or axed by the “not-in-my-backyard” lobby and unhelpful bureaucracy. Instead the country was “free-loading off the genius of its past”, he added, highlighting that no new reservoir had been built in 30 years.

“This government will not tolerate this nonsense any more,” he said, stating that 150 new major infrastructure projects would be introduced by his government. "A milestone that will triple the number of decisions on national infrastructure compared with the last parliament," he added, without going into further detail.

Change has begun

In similar plain-speaking, he criticised past governments that had “promised change but never delivered it”, while emphasising the “path of change is long and hard”.

“I expect to be judged on my ability to deal with this and the work of change has begun,” he said. Already in his tenure, £25 billion has been invested in the National Health Service, asylum seeker returns were up by 53 per cent, while workers' minimum wage will be raised by a record amount from April.

The new government was “fixing the foundations, clearing up the mess” so it could take the country forward towards “a decade of national renewal”.

Six milestones

The British people were right to “hold our feet to the fire”, Mr Starmer said, and the government would be judged on achieving six milestones.

“Make no mistake – this plan will land on desks across Whitehall with the heavy thud of a gauntlet being thrown down,” he pledged.

A key aim was to “deliver the highest sustained growth” in the G7, the world’s richest democratic countries, alongside an “ambitious” plan to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years.

The ailing NHS, still recovering from a backlog exacerbated the pandemic, would ensure 92 per cent of patients requiring operations treated within 18 weeks.

An additional 13,000 police officers would be put on the beat, and at least 75 per cent of children would be able to read to read and write when they start school aged five.

Some questions were raised over the Prime Minister's pledge to put the UK on track to generate “at least 95 per cent clean power by 2030”, as it was previously understood this target would be 100 per cent. However, Ed Miliband, the Environment Secretary, later cleared up the misunderstanding by stating that 5 per cent was for gas needed as emergency back-up.

With legal and illegal migration running rampant – with an excess of more than 700,000 in the past year – the Labour leader also vowed to radically reduce the number “because that is what working people want”.

Into the storm

Ultimately, like every government, Mr Starmer knows he will be judged on his results but he has also made clear to the British people that he will not shy away from using direct language to achieve them.

“We will walk through the storm and build a new Britain,” he concluded. “We will fix the foundations, repair the damage, reform government and rebuild Britain through the power of change.”