Sir Keir Starmer has declared that he is a “hard enough b*****d” to lead the UK despite Labour’s poor polling and numerous U-turns since taking office a year ago. The Prime Minister is facing arguably his biggest crisis since swooping into Number 10 after his backbench MPs rebelled against Labour’s planned welfare cuts.
The Government passed its watered-down bill on Tuesday, but only after making huge last-minute concessions to win over Labour rebels. This came after the Government also U-turned on plans to cut winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners.
Speaking to the BBC Political Thinking podcast, Sir Keir was asked about these U-turns by host Nick Robinson.
The Prime Minister was asked about a suggestion from one Labour source that he had “lost the dressing room.”
Sir Keir replied: “I’m a hard enough b*****d to find out who said that so I can have a discussion with them.”
Defending his change of tack on winter fuel and welfare cuts, he added: “I’m not one of these ideological thinkers, where ideology dictates what I do.
“I’m a pragmatist. You can badge these things as U-turns – it’s common sense to me. If someone says to me, ‘here’s some more information and I really think it’s the right thing to do’, I’m the kind of person that says, ‘well, in which case, let’s do it’.”
Sir Keir did admit, however, that his now infamous ‘island of strangers speech’ on immigration – which critics slammed as divisive – was one of his regrets during his time in office.
But the Prime Minister also wanted to highlight Labour’s achievements in Government.
He said: “Whether that’s rolling out school uniform projects, whether it’s school meals, breakfast clubs, you name it – and also [bringing in] a huge amount of investment into the country.
“And, of course, we’ve been busy getting three trade deals.”