Sir Keir Starmer will call on voters to reject “pointless populist gestures” as he kicks off the likely election year with a speech seeking to draw dividing lines with Rishi Sunak’s Conservative party.
The Labour leader will claim the Tories have “no practical achievements to point towards” after nearly 14 years in Government at Westminster.
With 2024 expected to be the year the Prime Minister calls the next general election, Rishi Sunak will also take to the road on Wednesday, with a rival new year stump speech.
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In his pitch to voters, Sir Keir will say he understands why people have turned against politicians, amid various Westminster scandals and a ramping up of political attacks between the parties ahead of the next nationwide poll.
The Labour leader will say: “You can reject the pointless populist gestures and the low-road cynicism that the Tories believe is all you deserve.
Read more: Labour to table tougher punishment for defrauding government
“That’s all they have left now. After 14 years, with nothing good to show, no practical achievements to point towards, no purpose beyond the fight to save their own skins.
“They can’t change Britain, so they try to undermine the possibility of change itself.”
He will promise to “clean up politics” of sleaze, adding: “No more VIP fast lanes, no more kickbacks for colleagues, no more revolving doors between Government and the companies they regulate.
“I will restore standards in public life with a total crackdown on cronyism: this ends now.”
Sir Keir will point to his legal career as a record of his anti-sleaze zeal, claiming he helped send both Labour and Tory “expense cheat politicians” to jail in the wake of the 2009 expenses scandal, while serving as the director of public prosecutions.
He will also mention having worked with “people living on death row”, a reference to his legal work on Caribbean death row cases in the early 2000s.
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The Labour leader will continue to draw a dividing line with his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, while seeking to demonstrate to voters he will offer a fresh start from the Conservatives.
He will describe the UK as a nation “exhausted” by “the sex scandals, the expenses scandals, the waste scandals, the contracts for friends”.
Sir Keir will add: “So, whether you’re thinking of voting Labour for the first time, whether you always vote Labour, or whether you have no intention of voting Labour whatsoever: my party will serve you.
“That’s who we are now, a changed Labour Party. No longer in thrall to gesture politics, no longer a party of protest, but a party of service.”
According to the Guardian, Sir Keir will vow to restore standards in public life with “a total crackdown on cronyism”.
The plans to crackdown on cronyism come amid Tory peer Michelle Mone being probed for potentially defrauding the UK Government over a PPE contract.
Read more: Rishi Sunak under pressure to hold May election
Lady Mone has admitted she lied when she denied having connections to the company, a consortium led by her husband, which was awarded contracts worth more than £200 million to supply gowns and face masks.
But reports also suggest the Labour leader is set to row back on a pledge, previously outlined by his deputy, Angela Rayner, to impose a five-year period where former ministers cannot lobby on behalf of companies they once had oversight over.
Ms Rayner’s anti-lobbying plan came after the Greensill scandal, in which the former prime minister David Cameron, now the Foreign Secretary, lobbied ministers on behalf of a bank for which he worked and which subsequently collapsed.
But it is now believed Labour agree with the UK Government that the plans could be excessive.
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