Keir Starmer urges former Red Wall voters to look again at Labour in speech which distanced party from Corbynism

Sir Keir, speaking virtually from Doncaster for Labour’s annual conference, went to great lengths to distance himself from Jeremy Corbyn, one of the major reasons Labour is believed to have seen devastating defeats in former heartlands in December.

And he positioned his party as that of family values, and patriotism, as he proclaimed: “We love this country as you do.”

“Let’s be brutally honest with ourselves, when you lose an election in a democracy, you deserve to,” Sir Keir said, as he compared the last time a Labour leader gave a conference speech in Yorkshire, with Harold Wilson in 1967 in Scarborough, to modern day.

Speaking at the Danum Gallery, Library and Museum, he said: “The circumstances were a bit different then.

For one thing, Wilson was able to update conference about Labour’s achievements after three years in government.”

But he said when you lose elections “you don’t look at the electorate and ask them: ‘what were you thinking?’ You look at yourself and ask: ‘what were we doing?’.

He said: “The Labour Party has lost four general elections in a row. We’ve granted the Tories a decade of power.”

Labour lost nine seats across Yorkshire and the Humber to the Tories in December, and Sir Keir said: “It’s a betrayal of what we believe in to let this go on. It’s time to get serious about winning.

“That means we have to change, and that’s what we’re doing.

“This is a party under new leadership.”

Marking him himself out as separate to the antisemitism allegations which plagued Mr Corbyn’s leadership, Sir Keir said: “We’re making progress - and we will root it out, once and for all.”

He said the party was now “a competent, credible opposition”, and said: “Never again will Labour go into an election not being trusted on national security, with your job, with your community and with your money.

“That’s what being under new leadership means.”

He added: “I’m not the sort of Leader who wants to turn the clock back. Times change – and so do political priorities.”

As well as contrasting himself to Mr Corbyn, he hit out at Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Sir Keir, a former director of public prosecutions, said: “While Boris Johnson was writing flippant columns about bendy bananas, I was defending victims and prosecuting terrorists.

“While he was being sacked by a newspaper for making up quotes, I was fighting for justice and the rule of law.”

He said: “The young and the old have been badly let down by this government. Our children and young people have been an afterthought.

“And the gap between the best and worst-off families threatens to get even wider.

“This inequality scars life chances: and I fear it will leave a lasting legacy for a generation of children.”

Sir Keir said if “levelling up is to mean anything, it must mean closing the education gap”, and he added: “Opportunity for the young should go way beyond party politics. It has to be a national mission to end the deep injustice that a child’s future is determined by their postcode, not by their potential.”

He said: “So to those people in Doncaster and Deeside, in Glasgow and Grimsby, in Stoke and in Stevenage, to those who have turned away from Labour, I say this: we hear you.

“Never again will Labour take you or the things you care about for granted. And I ask you: Take another look at Labour.

“We’re under new leadership.”