Keir Starmer renews call for immediate general election

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Keir Starmer has renewed his call for an immediate general election, accusing Liz Truss’s government of being too mired in “pathetic squabbles” to govern the UK.

The Labour leader said the Conservatives had hit “a new chaotic low,” after the departure of the home secretary, Suella Braverman, and Wednesday night’s bungled vote in the House of Commons.

“All the failures of the past 12 years have now come to the boil,” he said, speaking to union delegates at the TUC congress in Brighton.

“The victims of crime who can’t get justice. People dying because ambulances can’t get there in time. Millions going without food or heating. And none of it can drum into the Tories the idea that our country must come first,” he added. “They lack the basic patriotic duty to keep the British people out of their own pathetic squabbles.”

Truss’s leadership is hanging by a thread after a string of dramatic missteps that began with the mini-budget. The new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, rejected most of its measures this week after Truss sacked his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng. Hunt is set to deliver a fresh package of spending cuts and tax increases on 31 October.

Starmer’s speech came on the closing day of the TUC’s three-day annual congress, which had been postponed after the death of the Queen. During the gathering, several general secretaries including Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, and the RMT’s Mick Lynch have called for coordinated strike action across industries.

Graham used her speech on Wednesday to call on Starmer to make an unequivocal statement of support for unions taking industrial action in the face of double-digit inflation.

“Whose side are you on?” she asked. “Do not stand on the sidelines and play this safe.”

Starmer has irked some unions in recent months by ordering frontbenchers not to appear publicly on picket lines, wary of being portrayed by the Conservatives as responsible for the disruption. Unite, which was Labour’s biggest donor at the last general election, has reduced its funding for the party.

Starmer has promised to “oppose and repeal” the legislation Truss’s government announced on Thursday to impose minimum service levels on striking transport workers.