Labour had to be turned ‘inside out and backwards’ after poll defeats – Starmer

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he had to turn the party “inside out and backwards” after it lost four consecutive general elections.

During a question and answer session with port workers on Teesside, he was asked by Unite union convenor Mark Hannon about how the party had a “condescending approach” to working class voters in the past.

Speaking to around 100 workers in a warehouse beside the River Tees, Sir Keir said he welcomed the question, explaining: “We have lost four elections in a row.

“We lost in 2019 really badly.

“I don’t think we should go back to the voters and say: ‘Didn’t you hear us last time?’ and shout a bit louder.

“I said we should change the Labour Party and turn it inside out and backwards, because the Labour Party was set up to support working people, to fight for working people, and we drifted too far from that, and that’s why we got that result in 2019.”

Addressing Mr Hannon directly, Sir Keir said: “We didn’t feel we had the right to go back to the country and effectively say to voters like you: ‘You got it wrong” – no, we got it wrong.

“Your criticism of what we got wrong is bang on.”

The Labour leader, who was joined by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband, said speaking to workers was “comfy territory” for him, and preferable to being in Parliament.

“That is the territory where most people have their conversations,” he said.

After Sir Keir’s reply, Mr Hannon told the PA news agency he approved of the answer.

He said: “He was quite condemnatory of the previous administration.

“I was taken aback.”