Keir Starmer defends praise for Margaret Thatcher: ‘She had a mission’

Keir Starmer defends praise for Margaret Thatcher: 'She had a mission and a plan'PA

Transcript

00:00 Over the weekend you sung the praises of Margaret Thatcher and I think some people in the room

00:05 here would say that the policy remedy put forward here is slightly different to her

00:09 economic strategy. I'm just wondering what aspect of her economic strategy you aspire

00:14 to the most?

00:15 Yeah, what I was doing the weekend in the article I wrote for the Sunday Telegraph was

00:21 distinguishing between particularly post-war leaders, those leaders, those prime ministers

00:28 who had a driving sense of purpose, a mission, a plan to deliver and those that drifted.

00:36 That's why I picked Attlee who of course had a new Jerusalem as his mission, his plan and

00:45 put in the foundations for the next 70 years or more. Thatcher of course, now it doesn't

00:51 mean I agree with what she did but you don't have to agree with someone to recognise they

00:57 had a mission and a plan in her particular case about entrepreneurship. Equally with

01:02 Tony Blair, a mission to change the Labour Party and put it in a position to seize the

01:07 opportunities of the era as the turn of the century. And I want a mission driven Labour

01:14 government. I want this sense of driving purpose that withstands the inevitable side winds

01:20 that any government gets and is clear and consistent over a five or ten year period

01:27 because I think it's the only way we can deliver. I think it's the only way realistically other

01:31 people are going to come alongside and invest in us because unless there's that clarity

01:35 it won't be there. So I was giving Margaret Thatcher as an example of the sort of leader

01:40 who had that mission and plan. That's obviously different to saying I agree with everything

01:45 that she did but it is I think, and I'll just finish it by saying, what we've had in the

01:50 last 13 years is the complete lack of leadership, complete drift, real drift. Can anybody in

01:58 this room define the mission of the last 13 years? What was it? What is it?