ITV News interview with Robert Peston at Labour conference: living standards, Reform, growth and the taxes in the budget, his unpopularity and Andy Burnham
Video: YouTube: ITV News (official channel). Retrieved 9 Oct 2026.
The words of Keir Starmer. Transcript from the video's captions, fetched on 2026-10-09; not an official record. Captions do not say who is speaking: Polifiles assigned each turn by reading the captions, without checking the audio. ITV News' upload of a Talking Politics podcast episode (10 minutes) built around Robert Peston's interview with the Prime Minister at the Labour conference in Liverpool, recorded after his keynote speech on 30 September 2025 (uploaded 1 October). Only the interview is kept, from the first question to his last answer: the opening clip, Robert Peston's introduction, the closing thanks and his analysis after the interview are left out. The captions run the two voices together in places, so turns are assigned by meaning, not by the '>>' marks (for example the question on whether Reform's policy, party and supporters are racist, which has no mark, is given to Robert Peston; in "Talk about your personal ju just hear how committed are you?" the fragment "just hear", probably the Prime Minister starting "just hear me out", stays inside the question). Trimmed: starts at "Prime Minister, you reject the politics of grievance"; ends at "when we're working in that capacity, work very well together.". Questions are shown in grey boxes. Tap a marked sentence to see the label and its sources. Other speakers' full contributions are in the video.
Well, look, people are frustrated because for 14 years under the last government, uh, their living standards did not materially improve and public services were decimated. and they want change and that's the mandate we won at the last election.
I always said that change would take more than 12 months. I said that before the election. I say it again. It will take longer than that. You can't turn around 14 years of failure in 12 months.
But we do need change. And I will be judged at the next election on whether we have delivered better living standards, whether people feel better off, whether they feel their public services are better, particularly the NHS, but also whether they feel safe and secure in their neighborhood and in their country. But I was railing today against the politics of grievance because we've got a a new fork in the road and the next election will not be the traditional election between Labor and the Conservatives. It will be Labor and reform and that means patriotic national renewal under the Labor Party where we fix the problems and move together as a country, one country together or the toxic divide and division of reform that will pull our country apart. And we have not had a fight like that in our country ever before.
And that's why it was very important for me today um to to make clear this political argument. And it's also why I appealed I appealed beyond the Labour Party because there are plenty of people who love our country for what it is. Um who will see this as their fight too.
I think it's a mistake to pretend this isn't the fight of our times. If it is the fight of our times, you think we've got to recognize that and we've got to be in it. I think simply ignoring it is a mistake, a political mistake. If you look across Europe, most center-right parties uh withering on the vine. That's what's happened to the Conservative party here.
This is not a UK issue. You can see it in other countries. It's a pattern. To ignore it, pretend it doesn't exist and not run towards the fight and win the fight would be a grave mistake for our country. I love our country.
I love our country. I'm proud of our country. It is a beautiful, tolerant, diverse country. It's who we are. And I'm going to fight for the country I love because I fear that we'll be torn apart by the politics of reform in a way that we have not seen in this country ever before.
Well, I I am not calling reform voters racist. Most of them are simply concerned and frustrated because they want to see change um and concerned that we secure our borders as I am. That is not racist. But there is a huge difference between saying on the one hand those that are illegally here should be removed. I agree with that.
We've removed 35,000. But to say as reform said last week that migrants who are lawfully in this country have been lawfully in this country for years working in our health service in education running businesses our neighbors should be removed. That is to tear at the very fabric of our society. And that's why I say I think the role of prime minister is to serve the whole of this country, not just parts of this country. And that we have to hold this country together, not tear it apart.
This is a different fight and we need to be clear about that fight. It is not just a labor fight. There are plent plenty of patriots in other c in other parties um who understand why it's important to fight for our country as it is and to preserve the reasonable tolerant compassionate people that we are as a country.
Well, I think it's worth bearing in mind that um in the first six months of this year, we had the fastest growth in the G7.
Just hear me out. highest growth in the G7. We had five interest rate uh cuts in a row. We've had record investment into this country. 118 billion in the first year of Labor government, 150 billion just two years ago.
Now, of course, this is the hard yards of growth, but to get growth, you need uh uh economic stability. You need investment coming in in the way it's coming in at the moment. You need to strip away all the blockers, the planning, the infrastructure. And that planning and infrastructure bill is going through parliament. Um it's a hugely important piece of legislation.
We'll almost certainly be bringing more legislation in behind it. These are creating the conditions for growth and we're winning contracts. Um the frigot contract that we won from Norway. We were up against competition from France, from Germany, from the US. We won that because people wanted to stand uh with the United Kingdom.
Could see the conditions here. There's much more to do. Um but they are the conditions in which uh we can ensure that businesses can grow and thrive which of course is what we need and that wealth is created in every part of the country not just in some parts of the country.
We had an election. And we had it last July. Uh I led my party to a landslide.
Hear me out. I led our well look I took over our party and people said you won't be able to change it. I changed it. Then they said you won't be able to win the election. We won the election with a landslide.
Now they say you can't change the country. I'll do the same. I'll change this country. We we got a mandate last July uh to change this country. A considerable mandate.
Um, and that's a mandate for five years and I will be judged at the end of that five years on whether I've improved living standards, improved the NHS and people feel safe and security in their community and that's what I intend to do.
Well, Andy is an excellent mayor and of course what you get with me and Andy is working together. we fundamentally reset the relationship between um Westminster and our mayors. They felt uh shut out under the previous government. Now we've brought them in, we work with them. So Andy and I work very well together at all at all the mayers and actually when we're working in that capacity, work very well together.