Keir Starmer at the Co-op HQ in Manchester. He said the Labour party manifesto was ‘not about pantomime. I’m running as the candidate to be prime minister, not to run the circus.’Keir Starmer at the Co-op HQ in Manchester. He said the Labour party manifesto was ‘not about pantomime. I’m running as the candidate to be prime minister, not to run the circus.
“Britain has lost its balance. It is too hard for people to get on. Opportunity is not spread evenly,” he said at his manifesto launch in Manchester. “The toxic idea that economic growth is something handed out by the few to the many. Today we turn the page on that for ever.“Redistribution can’t be a one-word plan for our poorest towns and regions.”
The pared-back manifesto focused on the party’s five missions of economic growth, clean energy, halving crime, reforming childcare and education, and building an NHS for the future. In a dig at Nigel Farage, who is standing for Reform UK in Essex, he said: “If you want politics as pantomime, I hear Clacton is nice.”Make sense of the UK election campaign with Archie Bland's daily briefing, direct to your inbox at 5pm . Jokes where availableEarly in his speech, the Labour leader was heckled by a protester who accused him of bringing in the “same old Tory policies” and letting young people down.