Aides shed tears of relief as Starmer shrugs off glitter protest to deliver ‘speech of his life’ | Beth Rigby
It was a leader’s speech received with such defining and raucous applause that Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria, having exited the stage, came back for an encore.
You probably never thought of Starmer as a rockstar politician, but in that hall this cautious, steady lawyer had undoubtedly electrified his crowd.
It was, shadow cabinet minister Thangam Debbonaire told me as the hall cleared, “the speech of his life” – while one of his core team told me they’d cried after he delivered it.
Read more: Starmer makes direct pitch to Tory voters – latest updates from Labour conference
The anxiety giving way to jubilation and relief – a reflection of how much that speech mattered to the party, and the man who wants to become your next prime minister.
The awful start, where a protester threw glitter over the Labour leader could have thrown him off course.
Instead, he took off his jacket and literally rolled up his sleeves to deliver a speech that both spoke of his values and set up the campaigning messages for those Labour supporters to take to the country.
Protester interrupts the start of Sir Keir Starmer’s speech in Liverpool. Pic: Reuters
The beginnings of the Labour election slogans were laid out by Starmer as he sought to answer the question “Why Labour?”
His five missions of government were to get Britain building again, switch on Great British Energy, get our NHS back on its feet, take back our streets and tear down barriers to opportunity.
But in truth this was not a speech packed with policies to win over wavering voters. His main pledge on housing – to build 300,000 new homes a year – mimicked what his Tory counterparts have already promised, while Labour’s pledges on police and the NHS had already been made.
That’s because the real aim of this speech was something different. His task was to appeal directly to voters beyond the hall.
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The protester could be heard shouting ‘true democracy is citizen led’
Sir Keir had come to his conference determined that it was not enough for the Conservatives to lose. He had to give the public a vision for Britain that was enough for Labour to win a mandate for what he describes as a “decade of renewal”.
His message was one of hope as he told his audience: “What is broken can be repaired, what is ruined can be rebuilt. Wounds do heal. And ultimately that project – their project – will crash against the spirit of working people in this country. They are the source of my hope.”
He did not whitewash the scale of the task as he looked back on the challenges for Labour leaders past.
“If you think our job in 1997 was to rebuild the crumbling realm. That in 1964 it was to modernise an economy left behind by the pace of technology. In 1945 to build a new Britain out of the trauma of collective sacrifice. Then in 2024 it will have to be all three.”
A speech not for the hall, but for the public
The pitch and tone of his speech undoubtedly gave the hall more confidence Sir Keir is determined to replicate the mood of 1996, not 1991 – set to be the heir to Blair, rather than fall short as Neil Kinnock did in 1992 when John Major’s Conservatives narrowly clung on.
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For this was a speech not for the hall, but for the public. And just like Blair in 1996, Starmer used his moment to appeal beyond his room to the undecided and doubters, to convince the public his party had really changed and was a party that instead of holding people back would help them on.
There were echoes of Blair when Sir Keir promised to prioritise economic growth, work with business, champion a competitive tax regime and back enterprise.
He told the audience he had led a “changed Labour party” no longer in the thrall to gesture politics and protest politics. And to “despairing” Conservative voters, he issued a direct appeal: “If you feel our country needs a party that conserves…you can join it. It’s this Labour party.”
This speech was a pitch from Starmer that he really is the heir to Blair.
He was speaking to a crowd that, after nearly 14 years out of power, is united around a singular goal – to win the next general election.
The mood in the conference centre was certainly more confident after this speech that Sir Keir can lock in the win. I suspect after that speech and its reception, he will be too.
Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
The London MP resigned as a Treasury minister in January after being named in several corruption inquiries in Bangladesh.
In her first public comments since leaving government, Ms Siddiq said “there’s been allegations for months on end and no one has contacted me”.
Last month, the interim leader of Bangladesh told Sky News the MP had “wealth left behind” in the country “and should be made responsible”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
Ms Hasina was forced to flee the country in August following weeks of deadly protests.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
Electrocuted on their genitals and mouths sewn up: Inside Bangladesh’s ‘death squad’ jails
Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
Source: Linda Lacewell
Related: New York bill aims to protect crypto investors from memecoin rug pulls
After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,” OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
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United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
The reciprocal levies on will be approximately half of what trading partners charge for US imports, Trump said. For example, China currently has a tariff of 67% on US imports, so US reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods will be 34%. Trump also announced a standard 25% tariff on all automobile imports.
Trump told the media that tariffs would return the country to economic prosperity seen in previous centuries:
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.”
“Then, in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying,” Trump said.
Full breakdown of reciprocal tariffs by country. Source: Cointelegraph
Trump presented the tariffs through the lens of economic protectionism and hinted at returning to the economic policies of the 19th century by using them to replace the income tax.
Related: Bitcoin rally to $88.5K obliterates bears as spot volumes soar — Will a tariff war stop the party?
Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with tariff revenue
Trump proposed the idea of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and funding the federal government exclusively through trade tariffs while still on the campaign trail in October 2024.
According to accounting automation company Dancing Numbers, Trump’s plan could save each American taxpayer $134,809-$325,561 in taxes throughout their lives.
US President Donald Trump addresses the media about reciprocal trade tariffs at the April 2 press event. Source: Fox 4 Dallas
The higher range of the tax savings estimate will only occur if other wage-based taxes are eliminated at the state and municipal levels.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who assumed office in February, also voiced support for replacing the IRS with the “External Revenue Service.”
Lutnick said that the US government cannot balance a budget yet consistently demands more from its citizens every year. Tariffs will also protect American workers and strengthen the US economy, he said.
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