Today Keir Starmer made his big speech to Labour Party Conference. It was his third address to Party Conference as leader and is likely to be his last before the next general election.

Hilary Schan, Momentum Co-Chair, responded: “Keir Starmer was right to say that, after thirteen years of Tory misrule, we need national renewal akin to the post-war Labour government. But by failing to back up this fine rhetoric with cold hard cash, Keir Starmer has fatally undermined his own prospects. You can’t fix a broken country on the cheap.

“Keir rightly said we need to get the NHS back on its feet. But as the British Medical Journal has said, we can’t do that without a major injection of funding. New towns are welcome – but without investment in social rent council housing, they won’t touch the sides of the housing crisis. 

“The idea that we can fix this deeply scarred country with vague promises of reform and a magic growth tree is a fairytale. Where is the higher minimum wage, the free school meals, the investment in our crumbling schools?

“The tragic reality here is that the Labour Leadership is guilty of the very sticking plaster politics it rightly derides. By committing to keep the same system in place, from privatised public services to a deeply unfair and unequal tax system which benefits the richest over working people, this Labour leadership isn’t just failing to offer real relief to millions who can’t make ends meet – it’s making a rod for its own back, too.”

Yesterday, Labour’s  Conference backed public ownership of energy and rail and the implementation of HS2 in full in a significant upset for the Party leadership. Unite and rail unions ASLEF and TSSA brought a composite motion which challenged the leadership who continue to resist energy nationalisation.

Welcoming the passing of the motion, with only a smattering of votes against, a Momentum spokesperson said: “This is a huge victory – and a clear message to the Leadership.

“Trade unions and Labour members, like the public, overwhelmingly want our public services in public hands, not being run for profit. With energy bills through the roof, and our public services in the gutter, it’s clear that the Tory privatisation experiment has failed disastrously.

“Labour gets this for rail, where it’s rightly committed to public ownership. Now it’s time to do the same for energy – and for water and mail too.”

The vote underlined that when a policy debate is actually scheduled, the left remains in a strong position to win the argument among delegates. There was criticism earlier in the Conference of unprecedented manoeuvres by the leadership to keep crucial debates off the Conference floor.

Yesterday too, media outlets were full of praise for Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ barnstorming speech to Conference.

But echoing Momentum’s critique, Andrew Fisher, the Party’s Executive Director of Policy and Research from 2016-2019, tweeted: “What the Shadow Chancellor’s speech lacked was any commitment to more day-to-day spending to rescue our crumbling public services.”

Image: ACC Liverpool. Author: Rodhullandemu, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.