Nigel Farage has delivered a damming verdict on Sir Keir Starmer’s speech after the Prime Minister refused to include immigration in his six milestone missions.
The Reform UK leader issued his response just minutes after the Prime Minister unveiled plans to build 1.5 million new homes and to put “more police on the beat, stamping out anti-social behaviour in every community”.
Farage said: “Keir Starmer’s milestones for government don’t include immigration or the exploding population. This reset offers no change and guarantees economic failure.”
Meanwhile, Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe added: “As someone who cares so passionately about our country, and desperately wants Britain to succeed – I am sorry to say, but Keir Starmer is simply not up to the job of Prime Minister. A man seriously out of his depth.”
The Reform UK has said Starmer’s speech ‘guarantees economic failure’
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The Prime Minister listed his six milestones after saying that a “strong foundation” of economic stability, and security measures had now allowed Labour to look ahead.
The first milestone to reach by the end of the Parliament is “higher living standards in every region of the country”, with Starmer adding that the UK was aiming for the “highest sustained growth in the G7, so working people have more money in their pocket”.
Building 1.5 million new homes was identified as the Prime Minister’s second milestone mission, and the third to put “more police on the beat, stamping out anti-social behaviour in every community.”
Starmer’s fourth milestone is to give every child the “best start in life” by ensuring a record number of five-year-olds enter school “ready to learn.”
His fifth milestone is clean power by 2030, “so never again can a tyrant like Putin attack the living standards of working people”. The sixth and final milestone was to cut NHS waiting lists to 18 weeks between referral and treatment.
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Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay slammed the speech, saying it was “overlooking the damage”. He claimed: “Starmer’s milestones don’t provide route to real change. Today’s listicle, while pointing in right direction on some issues, is missing wholesale ambition that a govt elected on a change agenda needs and it overlooks the damage of policies like cutting Winter Fuel Allowance.
“We have a country reeling from severe flooding and facing more storms this weekend, a country where people are struggling to heat their homes this winter, and a country worried about finding the school places and doctor appointments that those they love need.
“Instead of listing out a few priorities, suggesting that these will be delivered at the expense of other important issues, we wanted today to see a gear change in this Government where they accept that we need to ask the very richest to pay more tax so we could properly fund all our frontline public services.”
Meanwhile, the Tories claimed the Prime Minister’s “emergency list of priorities” is a sign that the Government is feeling “pretty unstable.”
Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said the plans ‘overlook the damage’
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Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Alex Burghart said: “The missions only mean anything if the Government is honest about what it is doing, about the milestones it is hitting or not hitting, and also why it has downgraded certain other priorities.
“Like, how has it chosen these six issues, over immigration, over GP surgeries, over A&E, over defence, over the £300 energy bill reduction target, over becoming the fastest growing economy in the G7. Why has the Government chosen the priorities it has? “
However, Starmer insisted that his milestones were not a reset of his priorities or confusing for the public to understand.
The Prime Minister said: “I announced the missions two years ago as our five national missions to give a sense of purpose-driven Government, and like all of the strategies I have set down since I became Labour leader… we have had a strategy, we have had a plan and we have stuck to it.
“So those missions went down two years ago, we have stuck to them, I have just reiterated them now.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer gives a speech in Buckinghamshire as he set out his Government’s “plan for change”
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He added: “We set out the milestones so that people can measure are we making proper progress on our missions, back to what we said two years ago and what will it feel like for me? Will I have more money in my pocket? Will I be able to get an appointment at the NHS if I need it?”
“These are, if you like, something for the public to use to hold us to account on what we say we can achieve on the missions in the first five years.
“And I will be absolutely straight about it, it is also designed to push and drive the reform that we are going to need if we are going to ensure that we bring about the change that is so desperately needed.”
