Keir Starmer: 'Yorkshire lost faith in the Labour Party to make change, we have to win back trust'

Labour leadership candidate Sir Keir Starmer said the Government’s levelling up agenda to narrow the regional equalities between the North and South must not fall victim to cuts to pay for the response to coronavirus, as he promised to win back the trust of Yorkshire if he became Labour leader.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post after a digital event for members in Yorkshire on Tuesday evening, Sir Keir, who is considered the favourite to take over from Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday, said he was convinced austerity had not worked over the last 10 years, so to recoup the costs of fighting the current crisis the Government must take a different tact.

Sir Keir said: “The Government has been right to put money behind the support packages that we've asked for.

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“The Labour Party and I asked for support packages to guarantee income when people were about to lose their jobs. We asked for the government to put in a support package for self employed people.

Labour leadership candidate Sir Keir Starmer. Photo: PALabour leadership candidate Sir Keir Starmer. Photo: PA
Labour leadership candidate Sir Keir Starmer. Photo: PA

“The package is good, it's not as good as it should be because the support doesn't come in until June, but I think one of the things that it's important for us to do as an opposition is to have the courage to acknowledge when the Government's got it right and in those respects, it's got it right - there are other gaps that we need to keep pushing them on - but they have got that right.”

But he said the support in place was likely to set the national deficit back to 2007/2008 levels.

He said: “In my view, the last 10 years has shown that austerity is not the way to deal with that, because it's brought about untold pain and suffering and our economy has stagnated.

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“So I am worried about that, we need to make a counter argument in relation to it, and I would do that as leader of the Labour Party.”

He said during the leadership race, while visiting areas in the region, he felt voters had lost faith in his party.

He said: “We do need to win back seats in Yorkshire, there’s no doubt about that, there were seats we lost which have been held by the Labour Party for years, for decades.

“That means restoring the trust of those communities in the Labour Party as a party for change. I didn’t have any sense in the many, many times I was in Yorkshire, that people in Yorkshire think things are fine and don’t need changing.

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“But I think they lost faith in the Labour Party as the party to bring about that change.”

But he said that a number of the votes the party lost were not new, signalling Yorkshire voters may have been falling away from the party for many years.

He said: “I think that some of the votes that we’ve lost, we’ve been losing for quite a long time now and we need to re-engage and reconnect, particularly with our towns.

“You can see it in Yorkshire, in the city of Leeds there’s a lot going on but then you’ve got the outlying towns and you’ve got a mini version of what’s going on all across the rest of the country. We need to build on that and understand that.

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“In all my discussions in towns and villages in Yorkshire, when we got past the gritty discussions about Brexit etcetera, I said ‘what are the two or three things that you really want me to think about on the train on the way home?’

“People said to me ‘we need infrastructure, we need better transport, we need jobs that have got dignity and security, and we want decisions made closer to us.

“I think this is particularly strongly felt in places like Yorkshire which has a strong identity.”

But Sir Keir would not be drawn on whether Yorkshire MPs would have a place in his Shadow Cabinet, including Leeds East’s Richard Burgon who is running for deputy leader.

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He said: “I have not had conversations with any of the leadership or deputy leadership candidates about any positions they may or may not have in the Shadow Cabinet.

“If I'm elected leader, obviously, assembling that Shadow Cabinet will be one of the first things that I have to do and so very early on, you will see all the answers to your question but I haven't throughout the campaign and I'm not going to start now speculating about who may or may not be in any Shadow Cabinet.

“We want a Shadow Cabinet that is as strong as it possibly can be to manage and tackle the challenges that lie ahead of us.”