Yes, ‘Superman’ Starmer made a slip of the tongue – but it didn’t take away from a banger of a speech

The “return of the sausages” was not in Labour’s manifesto, but somehow in the excitement of his first conference speech as prime minister, Keir Starmer made it an extra policy commitment.

Did he really just say that? Yes, he somehow managed to garble the word “hostages” during a heavy passage about the Middle East. But it simply didn’t matter because this was “Superman” Starmer’s day – the day his cantankerous and impossible party finally conceded that, yes, all things considered, it loved its leader.

The thing about Labour is you can never take the hall for granted. And despite a summer of winter fuel discontent, briefing wars and now a scandal over his £16,200 clothing freebies (how does a man whose suits look identical run up such a high bill?), the cheers of 5 July echoed again.

A clue that things were likely to go well came an hour before the doors opened, when the queue for seats was already stretching through the exhibition centre. Ministers walked sheepishly past the ordinary members to take their rows in the hall.

As the seats filled up, they played over giant screens a Star Wars-style rolling list of seats won by Labour at the general election. A bit like that scene where Luke Skywalker’s craft skims over the Death Star; it rammed home the eye-popping scale of Starmer’s July landslide.

After a video montage of the election night best moments to boost the mood even higher, Starmer bounced on stage in his election suit and a pair of those free specs and the crowd surged to its feet, the first of many standing ovations.

“People said we couldn’t do it, but we did,” he said. He reminded the hall of his first conference speech, made during Covid lockdown to “a live audience of one – the camera” and made a good joke. “Do you remember that one? It’s all right – nobody else does.”

It was a long speech, one that may have sagged in places but still remained largely positive. And while some of it was dull (only a lawyer could craft a phrase as tortuous as “because politics sees public service as a privilege. Not privilege as an entitlement to public service”); just in time, he threw in some crowd pleasers – a pledge to house veterans, domestic abuse victims and care leavers – that got the standing ovations going again.

The election may be over, but Starmer sounded angrier with the previous government than ever. He laid into the “performance politics” of the Conservatives, especially the £700m distraction of the Rwanda policy, with a ferocious loathing that seeped through the lawyerly language. “A lie. An act. A charade.”

There was plenty in the speech to challenge his party – in fact some of the audience may have been clapping things that they will later disagree volubly with. He laid down “the iron law” that public spending must be properly funded, which put a bucket of water over hopes of a borrowing spree.

And he won yet another mini-ovation for envisioning “an NHS facing the future” which appeared to signal reform of the nation’s favourite sacred cow.

He also told a genuinely funny story about taking his family to see the Lake District cottage of his childhood holidays. The woman did not recognise him but invited the Starmers in anyway to look around. “Someone’s nicking your car,” she suddenly told him. Starmer’s reassurance that it was just the police moving it left her confused until her husband pointed out who the visitor was. She told him: “If I’d known you were a politician I’d have pushed you down the stairs when I had the chance!”

Despite the density of his text, Starmer spoke even more fluidly than usual. He breezed through the verbal error of the returning sausages without missing a beat and dealt with an inevitable Gaza heckler with practiced ease. “This guy’s obviously got a pass from the 2019 conference,” he said dismissively as the interrupter was frogmarched out.

Another ferocious passage laid into the right wing for exploiting tensions over immigration. “To those who say the only way to love your country is to hate your neighbour, because they look different, I say not only do we reject you, we know that you will never win.” Britain was “a country with fairness in the water”.

The ovation at the end was loud and genuine. Looking unenthusiastic about the prospect, Lady Victoria was propelled onto the stage and she stood there awkward for the obligatory twosome shot. Fortunately, for all concerned, the ovation was cut short as the First Couple left the stage.

Whatever future divisions were seeded in this speech, Starmer had his post-victory party cheering him to the rafters. Which means, in all likelihood, conferences will be tougher from now on.