LIVERPOOL, England (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will call on his Labour Party to unite on Tuesday, saying it was engaged in a “fight for the soul of our country” that would be long, difficult and not always comfortable.
At his party’s second annual conference in the northern English city of Liverpool since winning power at a landslide election last year, Starmer needs to re-establish his authority over a party that is increasingly restive after falling far behind the populist Reform UK in opinion polls.
The British leader will try to flesh out his strategy to deal with the growing popularity of Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform, after some in Labour said he was tacking too far to the right on immigration to match the populist party.
DIFFICULT DECISIONS AHEAD ON TAX
In a nod to the difficulties he has faced in the first year of his premiership, Starmer will again commit to raising living standards and putting money in the pockets of voters, which lawmakers say are essential to win back the party’s traditional electoral base – the working classes.
“No matter how many people tell me it can’t be done, I believe Britain can come together,” Starmer will say in his conference speech, according to advance excerpts.
“We can all see our country faces a choice, a defining choice. Britain stands at a fork in the road. We can choose decency, or we can choose division. Renewal or decline.”
He faces some difficult decisions. After saying that last year’s tax rises – the biggest in more than 30 years – were a one-off in terms of scale, the government might be forced to again raise tens of billions of pounds in taxes to cover a forecast fiscal shortfall.
Finance minister Rachel Reeves used her speech at conference to warn those in the party who want her to ease her fiscal rules to spend more on the nation’s ailing economy that they were “wrong, dangerously so”, keeping the door open to tax rises.
Starmer will also make clear that some decisions might be difficult for Labour, which has long argued its return to power after 14 years of opposition had been made almost impossible by a Conservative administration that failed to balance the books.
“It is a test. A fight for the soul of our country, every bit as big as rebuilding Britain after the war, and we must all rise to this challenge,” Starmer is expected to say.
“And yet we need to be clear that our path, the path of renewal, it’s long, it’s difficult, it requires decisions that are not cost-free or easy. Decisions – that will not always be comfortable for our party.”
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Alex Richardson)
