I interrupted Keir Starmer’s manifesto launch – here’s why

Just a cou­ple of hours ago I was dragged out of a packed con­fer­ence hall in Man­ches­ter, after con­fronting Labour leader Keir Starmer at his party’s man­i­festo launch. As he deliv­ered his speech, I held up a ban­ner read­ing ​‘YOUTH DESERVE BET­TER’ before it was quick­ly ripped out of my hands. As I was led away, I made my voice heard – say­ing ​‘you say you’re offer­ing change, but it’s just the same old Tory policies.’

I’m in my twen­ties, and I live in Keir Starmer’s con­stituen­cy. In recent years I’ve tried plen­ty of ways to talk to him about the expe­ri­ence of my gen­er­a­tion – of grow­ing up in the shad­ow of the finan­cial cri­sis, under aus­ter­i­ty, and with sci­en­tists con­stant­ly sound­ing alarm bells about the cli­mate cri­sis that threat­ens to make our futures unliv­able. I’ve writ­ten let­ters, tried to speak to him at his surg­eries, asked to meet with him. But he hasn’t lis­tened – and now he’s weeks away from becom­ing Prime Min­is­ter, stand­ing on a man­i­festo that offers us noth­ing that will improve our lives now or secure our future.

This elec­tion is the most impor­tant in my life­time. From sum­mer wild­fires to win­ter flood­ing, we’re in a plan­e­tary code red. Sci­ence tells us we’re in the final years to take mean­ing­ful action against the cli­mate cri­sis. At the same time, Tory wreck­ers have pushed our coun­try to the brink over the last decade and a half – strip­ping mon­ey away from com­mu­ni­ties, leav­ing our pub­lic ser­vices crum­bling. Water and ener­gy boss­es are mak­ing huge prof­its while chil­dren get sick from drink­ing tap water or swim­ming in the sea, par­ents are choos­ing between turn­ing the heat­ing on and putting food on the table, and old­er peo­ple are dying in win­ter because they can’t afford their heat­ing bills.

What we des­per­ate­ly need now is bold action to rebal­ance our econ­o­my so it works for ordi­nary peo­ple, to rebuild our pub­lic ser­vices, and to tack­le run­away cli­mate change so that we all have a future to look for­ward to. With Labour almost cer­tain to form the next gov­ern­ment, we’re all watch­ing them to see if what they’re offer­ing match­es the scale of the challenge.

But what Keir Starmer unveiled today just doesn’t touch the sides. Labour have some decent ideas – their pub­licly-owned GB Ener­gy plan could pave the way for a tran­si­tion to net zero that ben­e­fits all of us; and their orig­i­nal plans to invest £28 bil­lion in green infra­struc­ture would have been gen­uine­ly transformative.

But they U‑turned on this key pol­i­cy, gut­ting it of the invest­ment com­mit­ment it would need to real­ly make a dif­fer­ence. Instead, Starmer and Reeves have tied them­selves in knots with fis­cal rules that pre­vent them from inject­ing the mon­ey our econ­o­my needs to grow – and that would allow us to take mean­ing­ful cli­mate action.

What we’re left with is change in name only – in real­i­ty, what we will see from the next Labour gov­ern­ment is sim­ply more of the same. Decline, delay, a stag­nat­ing econ­o­my and widen­ing inequal­i­ty while wild­fires rage and floods sweep people’s lives away.

That’s why I con­front­ed Starmer today – to let him know that my gen­er­a­tion won’t sit by and watch his par­ty throw away our future. Labour wants us to believe there is no alter­na­tive to their pol­i­tics as usu­al, but there is. Move­ments like ours are not going to let up — our trans­for­ma­tive poli­cies to invest in tack­ling the cli­mate cri­sis, to tax the rich to fund pub­lic ser­vices, back­ing pub­lic own­er­ship, and oppos­ing war crimes in Gaza and around the world, are popular.

Dis­rupt­ing Labour’s big moment is just one part of our plan to make an impact at this elec­tion by seiz­ing the nar­ra­tive, build­ing pop­u­lar sup­port, and forc­ing our gen­er­a­tion and cli­mate change back onto the agen­da. By show­ing what we’re capa­ble of when we organ­ise togeth­er — whether that’s chang­ing the nar­ra­tive or elect­ing new Cham­pi­ons — we’ll show them they can’t con­tin­ue to ignore us.

Read more Huck Elec­tion con­tent here.

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