LIVERPOOL, England — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Tuesday that he will “fight with every breath” he has to win back voters lured by the “snake oil” of the left and right — and laid out an appeal promising renewal to benefit the working class.

His speech on the penultimate day of Labour’s party conference in Liverpool was littered with references to Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK is leading in polls, but Starmer aimed at the extremes on both sides, including those within his own party calling for a wealth tax.

The prime minister said that he wanted “no more lectures” from “self-appointed” working-class champions, arguing that growth — and taking long difficult decisions that will “not be cost free” or “comfortable” for Labour members or MPs — is the solution for what ails Britain today.

He said that Britain had failed to rebuild following the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, and had stuck with failed policies on globalization, mass immigration, and declining industry and training, creating a country where voters are now seduced by a “tempting path” of so-called easy answers.

But to those who have nothing positive to say about the U.K.’s future, Starmer offered a kaleidoscope of positive images.

“We will fight you with everything we have because you are the enemy of national renewal,” he said, picking out audience members who have delivered for their communities through recycling school uniforms or scrubbing graffiti from “all the way from the South Downs to the Shetland Islands,” before asking, over and over: “Is that broken, Britain?”

Moving on from Labour’s past

In a speech littered with stories of meeting voters including shipbuilders on the River Clyde in Scotland, childcare workers in Nuneaton and a woman worried about immigration in Oldham, Starmer attempted to align his personal story “from a working-class background to this” with the experience of voters across the U.K.

“I owe everything to this country and its values,” he said.

He went on to recount that his father did not feel respected because he worked with his hands as a working class toolmaker, and that when Starmer went to university he felt put on a pedestal — but then went on to proclaim that Tony Blair’s target to send 50 percent of children to university is no longer “right for our times,” and pledged to replace it with a target of two-thirds for universities and apprenticeships.

On immigration, he said his party had become a “party that patronized working people” for having concerns about immigration. He added that there was a clear line between British values of patriotism and free speech separating the “thuggery” of those inciting racist violence.

Farage claims ‘abuse’

Farage, in a live-streamed statement on X following Starmer’s speech, responded that the prime minister and the party’s conference had “descended into the gutter.” He claimed Starmer’s attack on Reform policies as “racist” suggested that the prime minister thought anyone who supports Reform was also a racist.

“I don’t normally worry about abuse being thrown at me,” Farage said, claiming that “this language will incite and encourage the radical left — I’m thinking of Antifa” and “directly threatens the safety of our elected officials and our campaigners.”

He invoked the recent killing of Charlie Kirk in the U.S. as evidence of the potential for political violence, and added that he now thinks Starmer is “unfit to be prime minister.”