Sir Keir Starmer today attacked the Tories for offering a ‘Jeremy Corbyn-style manifesto’ to voters as he swiped at Rishi Sunak‘s ‘unfunded’ plans.
The Labour leader derided the Conservative election manifesto, launched by Mr Sunak at Silverstone this morning, as ‘a recipe for five more years of chaos’.
In a dig at his predecessor as party leader, Sir Keir said: ‘It’s a Jeremy Corbyn-style manifesto… load everything into the wheelbarrow, don’t provide the funding and hope that nobody notices.’
But his mocking of Mr Corbyn’s two general election manifestos, published before the 2017 and 2019 contests, prompted fury among Labour’s left-wingers.
They pointed to how Sir Keir previously served as a key member of Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, and had hailed the party’s offer to voters under his predecessor.
When he ran to replace Mr Corbyn as Labour leader in 2020, Sir Keir praised the party’s 2017 manifesto as a ‘foundational document’ and lauded its ‘radicalism’.
Sir Keir Starmer today attacked the Tories for offering a ‘Jeremy Corbyn-style manifesto’ to voters as he swiped at Rishi Sunak’s ‘unfunded’ plans
The Labour leader derided the Conservative manifesto, launched by Mr Sunak at Silverstone this morning, as ‘a recipe for five more years of chaos’
Critics pointed to how Sir Keir previously served as a key member of Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, and had hailed the party’s offer to voters under his predecessor
As he launched his campaign to replace Mr Corbyn as Labour leader in January 2020, Sir Keir praised the party’s 2017 manifesto as a ‘foundational document’ and lauded its ‘radicalism’
Speaking ahead of Mr Sunak’s launch of the Conservative manifesto today, Sir Keir said the Tories had used a pledge to crack down on tax avoidance to fund ‘at least four different propositions’.Â
He told reporters on an election campaign visit to Whale Hill Primary School in Middlesbrough: ‘That’s why I say it’s a Jeremy Corbyn-style manifesto, which is load everything into the wheelbarrow, don’t provide the funding and hope that nobody notices.
‘The money isn’t there, it is a recipe for five more years of chaos.’
Mr Corbyn has previously said Sir Keir should not ‘diss’ Labour’s 2019 manifesto, having served as shadow Brexit secretary between 2016 and 2020 and campaigned on the manifesto at the last general election.
But Sir Keir said the rejection of that manifesto by voters had led him to change the Labour Party.
He said: ‘If you lose that badly, you don’t look at the electorate and say ‘What were you doing?’, you look at your party and say ‘You need to change’.’
He added that Labour’s manifesto, set to be released on Thursday, will be ‘fully-funded, fully-costed’ and help stabilise the economy.
Campaign group Momentum, which was set up to support Mr Corbyn’s leadership, attacked Sir Keir’s remarks.
A spokesman said: ‘Labour’s 2019 manifesto was fully costed. Keir should know, he stood on it as a member of the shadow cabinet.
‘But instead he insists, inexplicably, on attacking his own side during an election and spreading misinformation in the process.
‘Perhaps what Keir doesn’t like about 2019 Labour policies like public ownership and wealth taxes was that they offered real change, not just the illusion of it.’
Andrew Fisher, who was Mr Corbyn’s director of policy between 2015 and 2019, pointed to Sir Keir’s remarks from the Labour leadership race in 2020.
Sir Keir told Labour members as he launched his leadership bid in January of that year: ‘We should treat the 2017 manifesto as our foundational document, the radicalism and the hope that that inspired across the country was real. So we have to hang on to that as we go forward.’
Mr Fisher, who authored Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos, claimed Sir Keir had shown little dissent when those two documents were put together.
He wrote for the i newspaper: ‘Today the Tories unleash a manifesto that offers tax breaks for landlords, threatens more cuts to welfare benefits, and fails to properly fund public services.
‘For Sir Keir Starmer to describe that as a ‘Corbyn-style manifesto’ is an insult to Labour members and supporters.
‘In 2017 and 2019 I sat in the same room as Sir Keir to sign off the Labour manifesto.Â
‘The only amendment he proposed to either was in 2017 when he wanted to insert ‘we will end free movement’.
‘Given this overlapped with Diane Abbott’s Home Office brief, we watered this down to the passive ‘freedom of movement will end when we leave the EU’ – a statement of fact rather than desire.
‘Those manifestos inspired Labour activists, as the Labour Party leader once recognised himself.’
Mr Fisher added that Sir Keir invited him to his office for talks after he became leader in 2020 and ‘asked if I would be interested in helping out with the next manifesto’.
‘Suffice to say there’s been no contact in 2024,’ he continued.
