Keir Starmer will make a major intervention this week, pledging a progressive fightback and promising the UK will reject the division and hate fuelled by the far right.
The move comes ahead of Labour’s conference amid increasing pressure on the prime minister from within his own party, where even senior loyalists have voiced fears that he has not mounted a passionate enough attack on Reform UK and rising racism in Britain.
In a speech later this week, Starmer is expected to say the UK is “at a crossroads” and that the government will lead the fight against “decline and division”.
The address, due to take place alongside other progressive world leaders, is intended to calm concerns among MPs and party members that Labour’s rebuttal of Nigel Farage so far has been based on workability of proposals rather than a moral objection.
Starmer is also said to focused on building an international coalition of centre-left leaders who can find ways to tackle the rise of right-wing populism, as well as forming a united front on issues such as Ukraine and Gaza.
“We have to have an answer to those questions. We need to be able to step up,” a Downing Street source said, adding that this included a response to rising concerns about immigration. They said it would be a “fatal flaw” for social democrats to ignore those concerns.
“If the social democratic response to these big questions doesn’t provide the answers they need, then people will look elsewhere, as obviously they already are,” the source said.
Insiders said the speech this week would set the tone for Labour’s conference and build on a series of interventions that signal a shift in strategy towards Farage. “There is a recognition, I think, that we need to go further on this,” one ally of the prime minister said.
No 10 had previously seemed unwilling to directly criticise a number of controversial Reform proposals over the summer, including plans for the mass detention and deportation of migrants, scrapping the Human Rights Act and withdrawing from the European convention on human rights.
On Monday, Farage announced his party would scrap indefinite leave to remain for migrants and replace it with a rolling visa system with a high salary threshold and limits on families.
Starmer’s spokesperson said the plan illustrated there was “a choice between national renewal, which is what this government is focused on delivering, and the path of division and decline which Reform wants to put the country on”.
But other Labour MPs expressed direct anger at the potential for the policy to split up tens of thousands of families. Sarah Owen, the chair of the women and equalities select committee, called it “morally abhorrent and economic madness”.
“The public believe in fairness and mutual respect, not this cruel Trumpian policy that would leave us all poorer. We are not America – we must resist this dangerous turn in British politics,” she said.
MP Charlotte Nichols called the plans “obscene” and said Reform have “no regard for what this means for the people themselves, their families and communities which will be torn apart”.
Senior sources said Starmer had begun to spend significantly more time taking soundings from MPs after a fortnight of turmoil, including losing the deputy leader, Angela Rayner, the US ambassador, Peter Mandelson, as well as a senior aide, to a series of scandals that cast doubt on his leadership.
As well as spending time last week in the voting lobbies and tea rooms with MPs, Starmer hosted a delegation for breakfast in No 10 on Monday morning.
The speech this week will be the first time Starmer will publicly take on the arguments of Farage since Reform ramped up its policy announcements and visibility over the summer, amid protests outside asylum hotels.
But the prime minister is understood to believe it is unfair to suggest the government has not loudly championed its own progressive policies, such as increased investment in green energy, workers rights and hikes to the minimum wage, as well as protecting most working families from tax rises in the last budget.
Sources said Starmer’s speech would build on an argument he made in an opinion piece for the Sun newspaper, where he called it a “struggle for the heart and soul of our nation”.
He said that though people’s frustrations with the economy and migration were real, “a small minority see instead an opportunity to whip up hatred … to follow an old and dangerous playbook that sets people against one another”.
In the piece, Starmer said there had been “loutish behaviour on the streets. And people made to feel like they are not welcome or safe here because of their heritage, religion or colour of their skin.
“We’ve seen a nine-year-old black girl shot at in a racist attack. Chinese takeaways defaced. That sends a shiver down the spine of every right-minded Brit. This is not who we are.”
MPs expressed anger and dismay at the slowness of No 10’s response to the “unite the kingdom” nationalist march a fortnight ago, fronted by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson and addressed by Elon Musk. It prompted Starmer to issue a strongly worded statement to the Guardian saying the UK “would never surrender” its flag to far-right agitators.
The prime minister also hit out at Farage at last week’s cabinet, saying ministers had to be “very clear about what we’re up against … We’re up against those that feed off the politics of grievance, those that do not want problems to be fixed, because if the problems are fixed, their reason to exist, their politics, ceases to have any role in our society.”
