The stage invasion at the start of Keir Starmer’s speech was a total failure for the protestor who carried it out, and a huge success for the Labour leader. It wasn’t clear what he was shouting about as he dumped a load of glitter over Starmer and was then carried out of the hall. Starmer, though, had the chance to react calmly, make the point about his party being about power not protest, and roll up his sleeves as though he was ready to get going with rebuilding Britain.
He joked to the conference that if the protestor thought that would bother him, ‘he doesn’t know me’. Aside from a Labour colleague appearing on stage to say ‘we’re going to take the jacket off’, Starmer barely skipped a beat and went on to deliver one of his best speeches so far.
The address itself was, as Starmer himself said, intended to answer the question of ‘why Labour’.
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