Sir Keir Starmer has admitted making three massive mistakes in his first year as Prime Minister. They included saying the UK was becoming an “island of strangers” as he announced a crackdown on immigration just last month. The Prime Minister also regretted appointing former top civil servant Sue Gray as his chief of staff – only for her to resign last October, just months after Labour’s election win in July. He issued a brutal verdict, saying he should never have given her the job.
And Sir Keir said he was wrong to say “things will get worse before they get better” once he became Prime Minister. The admission that his first year had hit by errors was made in an interview published today but conducted before his latest embarrassing u-turn over disability benefit cuts was confirmed.
Sir Keir faced criticism from some of his own Labour MPs after he said the Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers”. Critics said it was similar to comments made by anti-immigration Enoch Powell in 1968, when he said British people risked becoming “strangers in their own country”.
The Prime Minister said in the new interview with journalist Tom Baldwin: “I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell. I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either.
“But that particular phrase – no – it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it.”
Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary highlighted the fact that Sir Keir appeared to be blaming his speechwriters. Mr Jenrick said: “It says it all that Starmer ‘deeply regrets’ saying Britain risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’. By 2031, nearly a quarter of people in the UK will have been born abroad. Starmer regrets saying what’s obviously true because he doesn’t believe in borders or the nation state.
“Starmer now says he was just ‘reading the words out’, like a dummy. We need a leader, not a ventriloquist.”
Sir Keir said about his former chief of staff Sue Gray: “Not everyone thought it was a good idea when I appointed her. It was my call, my judgment, my decision, and I got that wrong. Sue wasn’t the right person for this job.”
And in the interview, published in The Observer, he said his comment that things would get worse before they get better “squeezed the hope out”.
He said: “We were so determined to show how bad it was that we forgot people wanted something to look forward to as well.”