Keir Starmer has called on progressive leaders to confront what he described as the industrialised infrastructure of grievance used by populists to distort politics and fuel division.
Speaking at the Global Progress Action summit in London, the prime minister delivered a firm warning that misinformation and false narratives cannot be left unchallenged.
Starmer said recent election victories for himself and fellow centre-left leaders such as Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese showed that progressive politics was far from dying out. But he argued that success now depended on taking on the lies that have taken root in our societies and offering a credible alternative.
Without naming him directly, Starmer pushed back against Donald Trump’s repeated portrayal of London as a decaying, unsafe city. “Those who walked the streets of London this week will know this city isn’t the wasteland of anarchy some would have you believe,” he told delegates, warning that similar narratives were being spun in countries across the globe.
He described this as an entire world created through our devices miserable, joyless and demonstrably untrue, and said its most poisonous expression had been seen in recent far-right demonstrations in London.
“You don’t need to be a great historian to know where that kind of poison ends up,” he cautioned.
Starmer said his government’s answer would be a programme of patriotic renewal,promising delivery rather than defence of the status quo.
On migration, he underlined plans for digital ID cards, insisting, “Every nation needs control of its borders. You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom without digital ID. It’s as simple as that, the task ahead,”
Starmer concluded, adding is to defeat falsehoods with delivery, and to restore trust through patriotism grounded in reality, not grievance.”
