It was, his aides tell me, a deliberately personal speech with no new policy, designed to try to convey who Starmer is and what drives him.
Because it’s fair to say that how the Labour leader might appear to who he actually is, are quite different things.
You might remember how Boris Johnson used to goad him as a “lefty Islington London lawyer” and use his title, Sir Keir, to paint him as elite and out of touch.
More on General Election 2024
Related Topics:
Part of this election campaign is about trying to define him in the minds of voters.
Follow Sky News on WhatsApp
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
His is the story of a small-town boy, growing up on the Sussex-Kent border, from a working-class background in which the annual family holiday was a trip to the Lake District.
Advertisement
His father was a toolmaker and his mum a nurse, with a debilitating illness that shaped all their lives.
But that isn’t, say his team, very well known beyond the bubble of Westminster.
While I have heard Starmer talk about his tool-making late dad Rodney Starmer countless times, only 11% of the public knows that was what he did for a living, points out one of his team.
“We know the Tories’ strategy in a large part is going after Keir Starmer personally and we want to ensure voters can see who he is, where he comes from and he intends to fight for them,” they said.
“This was a deliberately personal speech that answers the questions of who he is and what motivates him, so it is right to kick off the first full week saying, ‘this is our candidate for prime minister’ when we know people are only starting to tune into the campaign.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
13:17
National service plan ‘desperate’
Starmer says what motivates him is a sense of injustice and an anger within him that politics is no longer in the service of people.
If you want to boil his pitch down to one sentence it is this: “I changed the Labour Party to put it back into the service of British people and now I want to put Britain back into the service of working people.”
The foundation of that, he says, is economic security, border security and national security.
But there is, as the leader acknowledged in this speech, a gap between his Labour and voters.
“I know there are countless people who haven’t decide how to vote in this election,” he noted in his speech. “Do I trust Labour with my money, our borders, our security? My answer is yes, you can.”
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
But the question of trust is one that haunts Starmer – the trust gap between him and voters.
When I asked him in a short interview to acknowledge that, he ran through his record as head of the Crown Prosecution Service as evidence that he delivers on promises.
But in politics, he has U-turned many times, most notably on the pledges he made when he was trying to become Labour leader.
When I put it to him that he has a trust issue because of promises broken, he told me he “totally disagreed” with that.
“I think it’s more important to stand in front of the electorate and say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t now afford what I said before because of the damage being done to the economy.’,” he said.
“What I am saying to the electorate is this, ‘I’m going to tell you in advance of the election what I don’t think we can afford to do, I’m not going to tell you you can have everything and then break a promise’… I think that is basic honesty with the electorate.”
There are still questions about how honest Starmer is really being. While he will not make big commitments on public services beyond his six “first steps” towards delivering his missions for government by the end of the parliament – on economic growth, NHS waiting lists, teachers in schools, dealing with illegal boat crossings, safer streets and all electricity from renewables by 2030 – he has over the weekend ruled out any national insurance and income tax rises in the next parliament.
It all, given what independent forecasters such as the IMF are saying about the state of public finances, points to spending cuts in the next parliament – but this is something Labour will not be drawn on, saying only it will swiftly conduct a spending review should it win the election.
But as we get beyond the framing – Labour’s “change” message versus the Conservatives’ “choice” one – and into the nuts and bolts of what these two leaders will do, Starmer is going to face more questions on his tax policies and spending plans.
And he will need honest answers if he really wants to convince the public he is a politician worthy of their trust.