Sir Keir Starmer’s bid to distance himself from Jeremy Corbyn has been brutally derailed by a video showing the Labour leader paying tribute to his predecessor on several occasions.
The video, which features a series of clips from Sir Keir’s past speeches, was shared by Twitter/X user James Foster in reply to an article that said the Labour leader would distance himself from Mr Corbyn in a major speech.
Mr Foster said: “He needs to have a word with himself. The man’s a fraud & more fools those who trust him.
“’I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who led our party through some really difficult times, who energised our movement, & who’s a friend as well as a colleague”!’”
The revelation comes at the start of a year when the UK is expected to hold its next General Election which could see Labour regain power for the first time since leaving No 10 in 2010.
In the video, Mr Starmer said: “I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who led our party through some really difficult times, who energised our movement, & who’s a friend as well as a colleague.
“We have to show we’re the party of the green new deal where we no longer have the question or the debate ‘Well it’s good for the economy but bad for the environment’. Not anymore. If it’s bad for the environment, it’s bad for the economy.
“Jeremy Corbyn made our party the party of anti-austerity and he was right to do so. The party that would fight cuts to public services. He made us the party that wants us to invest more in our public service and he was right to do so and we must retain that.
“We build on it, we don’t trash it as we go forward. We should treat if you like the 2017 [election] manifesto as our foundational document. The radicalism and the hope that that inspired across the country was real. Anybody who knocked on a door during that election knows it was real, so we have to hang onto that.”
While Sir Keir has previously praised Mr Corbyn, the Telegraph reported that he is set to distance himself from his predecessor in an upcoming speech.
Sir Keir said politics was not a “sermon from on high” and that it was about how to make a practical difference to people’s lives.
He is also believed to be about to openly attack former Prime Ministers Lord David Cameron and Boris Johnson.
On his own leadership, criticism has also been levelled at Sir Keir. Last month, the Dagenham and Rainham MP Jon Cruddas described him as an “elusive leader”.
Mr Cruddas said: “Labour appears to be content for the coming election to amount to a referendum on the performance of the governing Conservatives rather than a choice between competing visions of politics and justice.”
He added that it was “difficult to identify the purpose of a future Starmer government”.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Sir Keir said: “In under four years, he has fundamentally changed the Labour Party to make it a government-in-waiting, acting in the service of working people. As Prime Minister, he’ll change the country for the better.”
