Labor leader Keir Starmer’s latest mission speech has been interrupted by protesters, with two activists standing behind the Labor leader attacking him in the middle of the speech about the party’s policy U-turns.
He was giving a speech in Gillingham, Kent, on “opportunity”, the fifth of five missions promised by Labor that will support a Labor government.
But midway through the speech, two people standing behind him interrupted him, unfurled a banner, and told Starmer: “We need a green new deal right now. You keep making U-turns.”
Starmer looked puzzled onstage and had to pause as they were removed. But he later added: “I think they may have missed the fact that the last mission I launched was on clean energy by 2030.”
Labor had recently confirmed that a planned £28bn a year commitment to green spending would only be implemented gradually, in a move criticized by many on the left but justified by Labor on the basis of its fiscal rules and challenges to spend so much immediately.
Opponents of Starmer are likely to capitalize on the protest incident in the future, as Conservatives already regularly attack Starmer over a series of abandoned promises and even sell their own Keir Starmer ‘flip flops’.
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one of the youngsters positioned behind Starmer for his education speech begins to boo him about watering down the £28bn green promise, before being escorted out of the premises pic.twitter.com/TReh2wD9RW
—Jim Pickard 🐋 (@PickardJE) July 6, 2023
In February, Keir Starmer revealed a series of missions that would form the “backbone” of a future Labor government. The missions focus on growth, crime and public safety, health, the ecological transition, and the current focus, opportunity.
The location he chose for his latest mission speech in Gillingham is within the Medway council area, where Labor gained control of the council in May. The area currently has three Conservative MPs, but all the seats are considered competitive with Labour.
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