Keir Starmer loves Britain the most
The Politics Show
The New Statesman
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2025
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Keir Starmer is on a mission to reclaim British patriotism.
The prime minister has just finished his conference speech in Liverpool, addressing a hall full of delegates waving flags from England, Scotland and Wales.
In some ways this was an attempt to celebrate Britain, its values, and its triumphs. In other very clear ways it was an attempted attack on Nigel Farage.
Anoosh Chakelian is joined by Rachel Cunliffe, Megan Kenyon and Ethan Croft.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The New Statesman. |
| 0:06.4 | Kirstama is on a mission to reclaim British patriotism. |
| 0:09.9 | The Prime Minister has just finished his conference speech in Liverpool, |
| 0:12.8 | addressing a hall full of delegates waving flags from England, Scotland and Wales. |
| 0:17.0 | In some ways, this was an attempt to celebrate Britain, its values and its triumphs. In other very clear ways, it was an attempted attack on Nigel Farage. Hello, I'm Anusha Kellyan and this is the New Statesman podcast. I'm joined now by Rachel Cunliff, Megan Kenyon and Ethan Croft. Hello. Hi. Hi, Newt. Labor is the party for working people. Labour is the party of national renewal. |
| 0:39.3 | Labour is the party of patriotism. |
| 0:41.3 | This was the sort of main theme running through the speech. |
| 0:44.3 | Did you think it worked? |
| 0:45.3 | I actually think it did work. |
| 0:48.3 | I think it worked as a conference speech. |
| 0:49.3 | So Kirstama is actually quite good, I think, at delivering conference speeches. |
| 0:53.3 | He's able to kind of stand on stage and set out a vision. |
| 0:57.8 | And he kind of did that. |
| 0:59.7 | It's all the bits in between the conferences where it goes a bit wrong. |
| 1:03.0 | I think as we discussed on the podcast yesterday, it has really helped Labour this conference |
| 1:06.9 | to have an enemy that they are defining themselves against in opposition to. |
| 1:11.6 | And there was loads of that in the speech. He mentioned Nigel Farage in the first couple of minutes, |
| 1:14.6 | and Farage came back as a motif at various points. |
| 1:18.6 | He said Nigel Farage doesn't like Britain, and he talked about the politics of grievance. |
| 1:22.6 | Yes. And he also, or not him, his team, had handed out loads of flags beforehand, Union Jacks, but also the flags of the British nations. And there were several more, I lost count the number of times people sort of stood up and started waving their flags. Did you get one, Ethan? No, I did not get a flag. I didn't get a flag either. But it was kind of, I think it was very interesting to have |
| 1:44.8 | not just Union Jacks, kind of all of the British flags there, because one of the themes of the |
| 1:50.2 | speech was, we're a diverse country that can come together and that needs to come together. And |
... |
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