Labour Conference: Starmer Takes Aim At Political Opponents But Ties His Own Future To Reform

(MENAFN- The Conversation) At Labour's 2025 conference, Starmer's chosen political narrative has been to draw a line between himself and Nigel Farage, between Labour and Reform – a choice between“decency and decline”. Labour represents a progressive patriotism and national renewal – and Reform a backwards-facing“politics of grievance”.

Establishing a clear line that separates Reform from Labour (and from as much of the electorate as possible) is all the more urgent a task since the latest polling suggests 29% of voters choose Reform and only 21% Labour. Judging by how often Reform were mentioned in Starmer's speech, in contrast with the Tories (about whom Starmer quipped,“Remember them?”), Labour appears to have accepted Reform as the main opposition.

While this decision is partly due to polling, it may also derive from a broader perception of Reform as Labour's biggest existential threat.“The politics of grievance,” Starmer told the audience, clearly referring to Reform,“is the biggest threat we face.”

Starmer's conference speech welded Labour's narrative to Reform: for him, victory for the former must come at the expense of the latter. Starmer would probably avoid this terminology personally, but the narrative is very much“us versus them”. Talk of a“dividing line” may be putting it too mildly, after all. Starmer now speaks of a“a fight for the soul of our country”.

And what sort of country does the prime minister want the UK to be? On the morning of Starmer's speech, his senior minister Darren Jones promised conference attendees that the PM would explain the“journey” that we are all about to go on. Lest we forget – as BBC chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman pointed out – we are only 14 months after an enormous Labour election win .

Keep your enemies close

Labour's narrative is defined by Reform to a huge extent, not just in electoral strategy but in basic rhetoric. If you saw a transcript of a speech about“national renewal”, and heard a politician attack complacent adherence to a status quo of globalisation and free movement, you'd perhaps assume it came from the political right.

Starmer clearly wants to wrestle a narrative of“renewal”,“patriotism”,“national pride”, away from the right-wing and rebrand them as traditional Labour values. He attached related terms were to the NHS – and presented Reform as an immediate threat to that institution.

It is significant that, for all the abstract talk of a struggle for the soul of the country, the antagonists were specific. A left-right struggle was done away with for a battle on a different front. Starmer took aim at“snake oil merchants on the right, and on the left”, fully aware that threats to his premiership (and to Labour itself) exist on both sides of the political spectrum.

Starmer also argued that he'd heard“enough lectures from self-appointed champions of working people”. Though this was explicitly directed towards figures like former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, it can also be understood as a rebuke to some on the left.

The conference hall was a sea of flags. Alamy

This is, on some level, also a battle for the working class – and class was explicitly mentioned many times. Starmer said he made no apology if his plans“lean towards the working class” and stated that too often, people have been overlooked and ignored by politicians specifically because of their class.

In the past, Starmer has drawn on his own life story when talking about class, but this time pulled away from that, sometimes for comic effect, for example saying that the audience probably already knew what his father did for a living . This was very much a speech about the party's future, and the country's future, not about Starmer's past.

One of the principles of good storytelling is knowing your audience. It is all the more significant that the Labour conference has not been the jubilant atmosphere we might have expected for a party so recently elected to government. Starmer knew that he had to unite the party around a common cause, and in the face of a common threat. We now know exactly who, and what, that is.

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