Keir Starmer to defend Labour’s energy plans in speech saying ‘holding back future’ won’t lead to growth – UK politics live

Labour leader to tell GMB union that his party would create a ‘new business model for Britain’

Good morning. There is some good polling around for Keir Starmer and Labour today – Redfield and Wilton Strategies has Starmer leading Rishi Sunak on every single leadership trait polled, Survation has the Tory lead over Labour in the 100 most rural English seats down from 39 points in 2019 to just 5 points now – but this morning Starmer has to give a speech to a union whose leader has strongly criticised Labour’s energy policy.

Starmer will respond by telling the GMB that Labour’s plan to transition to clean energy will create jobs for its members. “Jobs – good, union jobs – will be fundamental to cleaner, safer work, new and better infrastructure for Britain,” he will say.

Starmer will claim Sunak would be happy to see the rest of the UK fall behind London. He will say:

I’m not even sure [the Conservatives] see the problem. If the City of London races ahead while the rest of Britain stagnates, as long as there was a hint of growth on his spreadsheet, Rishi Sunak would think that’s fine. But it’s not.

If you leave this many people behind, a nation cannot grow fairly. We can’t do it with low wages. We can’t do it with insecure jobs and bad work, with a stand-aside state that doesn’t fight for the future, without a proper industrial strategy.

Starmer will accuse the Tories of being willing to see British industry fail. He will say:

For too long, Britain has allowed the opportunities of the new energy technologies to pass us by. Without a plan, the energy industries we rely on will wither and decline.

The Tories think it’s the market doing its job when British industry falls behind. It’s not some glitch in their model – it is the model.

He will say defend Labour’s plans, saying “holding back the future” won’t lead to growth. He will say:

There is no way to growth in Britain in holding back the future. But equally, there is no way to growth that doesn’t involve bending and shaping it.

We can create a new business model for Britain, one which creates economic security and grows not just our productivity, but our hope and our optimism.