The Mancunian Way: Crackdown at city gateway

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Hello,

There was a bit of a kerfuffle when Sir Keir Starmer took to his feet for his big speech at the Labour Party Conference this afternoon.

A protester - who shouted ‘true democracy is citizen led’ - appeared to throw glitter on the Labour leader before being dragged off stage. "If he thinks that bothers me, he doesn’t know me”, Sir Keir said, while taking off his jacket, apparently unphased. And far from ruffling features, he seemed pretty relaxed during the rest of his speech.

He spoke of a promise to ‘bulldoze’ his way through restrictions to build a new Britain, with new homes and businesses and an NHS ‘back on its feet’. He promised to reshape the country with 1.5 million homes, including new towns, modernised infrastructure and support for green industries.

But he acknowledged the scale of the challenge would be immense compared with his predecessors if his party does win the next election. “If you think our job in 1997 was to rebuild a crumbling public realm, that in 1964 it was to modernise an economy left behind by the pace of technology, in 1945 to build a new Britain out of the trauma of collective sacrifice, then in 2024 it will have to be all three,” he said.

But, of course, there was time for a joke or two with Sir Keir mentioning Rishi Sunak’s announcement on HS2 at the Conservative Party Conference last week. "What can you say about a Prime Minister who goes to Manchester to cancel Manchester's trainline?" he quipped.

There was a huge queue to get into the hall to see Sir Keir’s speech, but M.E.N