Starmer: 'I wouldn't cause damage to working people' after hearing Wolverhampton couple's plight

Sir Keir leader unveiled a pledge card with six “first steps” his party would take if it were to win power as he spoke at a campaign event in Essex.

The steps include measures to invest in the NHS, education and policing, to set up a new national energy company and an elite border force, and to promote economic stability.

Sir Keir hit back at suggestions the pledges were a scaled-back version of his party’s ambitions for government set out previously in five missions for “national renewal”.

He sought to portray the first steps as part of Labour’s wider programme for government, as he attempted to manage expectations about what the party could achieve in power following the UK’s recent economic difficulties.

“I’m not scaling back our ambition absolutely at all,” he said.

“The way I’ve set this out has been a strategy I’ve been operating to for four years.”

He said the first stage of the strategy was to recognise the “scale” of defeat Labour suffered in 2019 and to change the party, and the next was to “expose the Government as incompetent”, which he said had been assisted by the behaviour of “several of their prime ministers”.

“We’re not reducing the mission,” Sir Keir said.

“I don’t accept that they’re small first steps,” he continued to insist in a Q&A with the media.

“If you’re waiting on an NHS waiting list, this is a change that makes a massive difference.”

He also emphasised the need for economic stability, which Labour’s campaign material says will require “tough spending rules”.

Sir Keir then referred to the Wolverhampton couple he spoke to who had chosen not to have a second child in the wake of the 2022 mini-budget.

“I’m not prepared to let an incoming Labour government ever do that kind of damage to working people,” he told the audience.

Meanwhile, Labour’s campaign co-ordinator, Wolverhampton South East MP Pat McFadden, said the timeline for Labour achieving its key pledge of cutting NHS waiting lists is “as soon as possible”.

“It’s a clear target. As soon as we get elected, we will put in place the changes that we need to put in place to make these first steps happen,” he said.

Asked whether it could be a target without a specific deadline, Mr McFadden said: “It’s 40,000 extra appointments a week, we’ll get on with it as soon as possible after the election.”

Mr McFadden said the only way Labour will win the election is by “appealing to people who haven’t traditionally voted” for the party when asked why Natalie Elphicke had been welcomed as a Labour MP while Diane Abbott is still without the whip.

Asked why it was taking upwards of 13 months to make a decision about whether Ms Abbott should be in Labour, he added: “It’s a process I’m not involved in at all. I hope it comes to a conclusion, but it’s not something I’m involved in.”

Asked what it says about the party that right-wing MP Ms Elphicke has earned the privilege of joining Labour while Ms Abbott is an Independent, Mr McFadden said: “I think what it says about the party is that it’s changed... We will not win the election just by appealing to people who always voted Labour... The only way you’re going to win the election is by appealing to people who haven’t traditionally voted for you, and who voted Conservative in many cases in recent elections.

“That is what the difference between losing and winning is, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.”