00:00 Buoyed by the polls and brimming with confidence, the leader of Britain's opposition Labour
00:05 party, Keir Starmer, declared on Tuesday that he was ready to assume the mantle of power.
00:11 But first he had to shake the glitter off his suit jacket.
00:14 As Mr Starmer took the stage at his party's annual conference in Liverpool, he was interrupted
00:20 by a protester who rushed up behind him and showered him with green and blue glitter.
00:25 It took a full seven seconds for security guards to run on stage and tackle the man,
00:30 who shouted, "Politics needs an update!"
00:33 Taken aback but not thrown off his stride, Mr Starmer shed his jacket, rolled up his
00:38 shirt sleeves, and tried to turn the spectacle into an object lesson about the transformed
00:44 party he now led.
00:46 "Protest or power," he said, referring to Labour's lengthy stint in opposition.
00:51 "That's why we changed our party."
00:53 After the police dragged the protester from the stage, Mr Starmer vowed to rebuild a Britain
00:58 that he said had been broken by 13 years of Conservative rule, a project that he suggested
01:04 would take two terms a decade a in government.
01:07 "What is broken can be repaired what is ruined can be rebuilt wounds do heal," Mr
01:12 Starmer said to a cheering crowd.
01:14 "Today we turn the page, answer the question a why Labour?"
01:19 With a plan for what he grandly proclaimed a decade of national renewal, he offered no
01:23 new announcements, but outlined an ambitious commitment to change planning laws to help
01:29 build 1.5 million new houses, add more police officers, and overhaul the ailing National
01:35 Health Service.
01:36 He also promised to end preferential tax treatment for residents of Britain with non-domiciled
01:42 status - a long-standing Labour goal but one with particular relevance given that the wealthy
01:47 wife of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Akshata Murthy, claimed that status until last year.
01:53 For Mr Starmer, 61, an intense, serious-minded but charisma-challenged former prosecutor,
02:00 the conference was vivid evidence of how far he has been able to pull his party out of
02:05 the wilderness since he took over as leader after Labour's crushing defeat in the general
02:10 election in 2019, its worst performance since 1935.
02:16 Once torn by divisions between its hard-left and centrist factions, Labour projected near-lockstep
02:22 unity in Liverpool, with little of the backbiting or protests that used to interrupt its gatherings.
02:29 Once contaminated by anti-Semitism in its far-left ranks under Mr Starmer's predecessor,
02:35 Jeremy Corbyn, the party this week expressed robust support for Israel in the aftermath
02:40 of the bloody incursions into Israeli territory by Hamas fighters.
02:45 "I utterly condemn the senseless murder of men, women and children a including British
02:50 citizens a in cold blood by the terrorists of Hamas," Mr Starmer said, to a standing
02:56 ovation.
02:57 "Except for a handful of activists waving Palestinian flags outside the conference hall,
03:03 there was little evidence of the rancorous battles over the Middle East that used to
03:07 rage at these gatherings.
03:09 Since becoming leader in 2020, Mr Starmer has taken a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism,
03:17 including purging Mr Corbyn, who now sits as an independent lawmaker and will not be
03:22 allowed to run as a Labour candidate in the next election.
03:26 At a panel on Palestinian rights held on the sidelines, the mood was cautious and subdued.
03:32 Chris Hoyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, warned the audience
03:37 he would not tolerate shouting and screaming.
03:40 Labour's decisive victory in a Scottish parliamentary election on Friday contributed to a sense
03:46 of hopefulness, even inevitability, among the party faithful.
03:50 In a speech on Monday, Rachel Reeves, who leads economic policy for the party, said
03:56 she looked forward to addressing the next conference as Britain's first female chancellor
04:01 of the Exchequer.
04:02 She won a video endorsement from the former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney.
04:07 "You cannot trust the Tories with our economy ever again," Ms Reeves declared, pointing
04:13 to the markets chaos that followed Liz Truss's brief stint in office as prime minister last
04:18 year.
04:19 Yet some worried that Labour's confidence risked edging into hubris.
04:23 While the party has an 18 percentage point lead over the Conservatives in polls, analysts
04:29 warned that this lead is fragile, having to do more with voter frustration with the Tories
04:34 than excitement about Labour.
04:36 Mr Starmer has not reached anything like the levels of popularity that Tony Blair, another
04:42 Labour leader, achieved before his a landslide election victory in 1997.
04:48 According to one recent survey, only a quarter of those asked said they were "very or fairly
04:53 clear" about what Mr Starmer stands for.
04:56 That he partly reflects his decision to abandon some of the pledges on which he ran for the
05:01 party's leadership in 2020, including the nationalisation of public services like water,
05:07 energy and rail companies.
05:09 Mr Starmer has also struggled to project a clear image to British voters.
05:13 Opponents in the Conservative Party like to refer to his full title, Sir Keir Starmer,
05:19 which he received for his services to law and criminal justice in 2014, but which they
05:25 used to cast the Labour leader as a member of the elite.
05:29 On Tuesday, he played up his working class roots, talking about how he was raised by
05:34 his father, a tomb maker and his mother, a nurse.
05:38 And he recalled how his dreams were incubated in his family's semi-detached house in Surrey,
05:43 not far from London.
05:44 "That pebble-dashed semi was everything to my family," he said.
05:49 The line-up of Labour speakers all singing from the same song sheet A_Mr Starmer's
05:54 iron-clad control over the party.
05:57 It contrasted starkly with last week's Conservative Party conference, where a mistress and an
06:02 ambitious Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, seemed to be competing openly with Mr Sunak
06:09 to be the future of the party.
06:11 Mr Starmer has moved swiftly to take control of Labour's power structures, junking most
06:16 of the polices of Mr Corbyn, the most left-wing leader of the party in decades.
06:22 With the party under his thumb, he has developed a warm relationship with Mr Blair and brought
06:27 his former aides back into the fold.
06:29 One of them, Peter Mandelson, a member of the House of Lords, said Britain's economic
06:34 woes would present a huge challenge for Mr Starmer, if he wins power.
06:39 "The country is in a state of pessimism bordering on depression at the state of politics, given
06:45 everything we have gone through in recent years," Mr Mandelson said.
06:49 "He's got to give them hope mixed with realism."
06:52 Mr Starmer struck that balance, warning that a Labour victory in 2024 would require equalling
06:59 the achievements of great Labour victories in 1945, when a Labour government rebuilt
07:05 Britain after World War II 1964, when it modernised Britain's sclerotic economy in 1997, when
07:12 Mr Blair said about fixing crumbling public services.
07:16 "Britain can, Britain must, and Britain will get its future back," Mr Starmer said, the
07:22 glitter sparkling in his hair.
07:24 He received a rapturous ovation from the activists of his rejuvenation.
