The Japan Times - UK's Starmer urges liberals to fight 'the lies' told by far right

The meeting in London included Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Canadian premier Mark Carney and comes as right-wing populism rises around the world and with Republican Donald Trump back in the White House.

"I don't accept that argument that somehow our politics is dying out," said Starmer, noting his landslide election win in July 2024 and the more recent victories of Carney and Albanese.

"But I do accept that it is now time for social democrats to confront directly some of the challenges and some of the lies, frankly, that have taken root in our societies," he added.

Starmer's Labour party has fallen behind the anti-immigrant Reform UK party in national polls since he secured a landslide general election victory in July last year.

The British leader's speech saw him try to lay out a more optimistic view of the future than the one put forward by Reform, headed by anti-European Union firebrand Nigel Farage.

Farage, a supporter of Trump, regularly claims that Britain is "broken" and Starmer has started to accuse him of being unpatriotic as he tries to claw back support.

The UK PM told the conference that Britain's next general election, expected in 2029, would be a "battle for the soul of the country" and a straight fight between Labour and Reform.

He said the "defining political choice of our times" was between "a politics of predatory grievance" or one of "patriotic renewal".

- 'Poison' -

He said the latter would be "rooted in communities, building a better country. Brick by brick, from the bottom-up -– including everyone in the national story".

"Difference under the same flag," he added in reference to a recent trend of flying English and British flags -- a show of patriotism that has unsettled some ethnic groups.

Starmer also referenced the recent "Unite the Kingdom" protest organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson in which US tech billionaire Elon Musk told the 150,000-strong crowd that "violence is coming".

"Now, you don't need to be a historian to know where that kind of poison can lead. You can just feel it. A language that is naked in its attempt to intimidate," Starmer told the Global Progressive Action Conference.

He also stressed that Britain's capital was not "the wasteland of anarchy" that some on the right, particularly in the United States, portray it as.

The address comes at the end of a week in which Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that irregular migration was turning European countries into "hell".

Starmer confirmed that his government intended to introduce digital ID cards by 2029 that would be mandatory for anyone who wanted to work in the UK.

"It is not compassionate left-wing politics to rely on labour that exploits foreign workers and undercuts fair wages," he said, adding that "every nation needs to have control over its borders".

H.Hayashi--JT