‘Operation Red Wall’: how Keir Starmer could win back Labour’s heartlands

Party leader targets lost voters with pitch to patriotism and competence

Keir Starmer
Party leader targets lost voters with pitch to patriotism and competence
(Image credit: Stefan Rousseau/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Keir Starmer has used his first party conference address as leader to set out Labour’s stall as a “competent, credible” opposition to the Conservatives - in a clear bid to win back lost “red wall” strongholds.

In a message targeted at Labour’s former working-class supporters, Starmer said his party had deserved to lose last year’s election, adding: “You don’t look at the electorate and ask them, ‘What were you thinking? You look at yourself and ask: ‘What were we doing?’”

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Joe Evans is the world news editor at TheWeek.co.uk. He joined the team in 2019 and held roles including deputy news editor and acting news editor before moving into his current position in early 2021. He is a regular panellist on The Week Unwrapped podcast, discussing politics and foreign affairs. 

Before joining The Week, he worked as a freelance journalist covering the UK and Ireland for German newspapers and magazines. A series of features on Brexit and the Irish border got him nominated for the Hostwriter Prize in 2019. Prior to settling down in London, he lived and worked in Cambodia, where he ran communications for a non-governmental organisation and worked as a journalist covering Southeast Asia. He has a master’s degree in journalism from City, University of London, and before that studied English Literature at the University of Manchester.