LIVERPOOL – Britain’s main opposition leader will on Tuesday promise that a future Labour government will “heal” Britain after 13 years of Conservative rule if it wins an election tipped for next year.

Mr Keir Starmer is set to pledge to “get Britain’s future back” during the headline speech of his centre-left party’s annual conference in Liverpool.

The address, due to start at 2pm, will focus on economic growth, health, safer streets and cheaper energy.

Mr Starmer is set to warn that the path to recovery from a cost-of-living crisis sparked by Brexit, pandemic lockdowns and the war in Ukraine will be a difficult one.

But he will add: “What is broken can be repaired, what is ruined can be rebuilt.”

“People are looking to us because they want our wounds to heal and we are the healers,” he will say, promising a “decade of national renewal”.

“People are looking to us because they want us to build a new Britain, and we are the builders,” he is due to add.

The speech comes with the opposition party enjoying double-digit leads in most opinion polls ahead of a general election that Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak must call by January 2025.

Mr Starmer has dragged Labour back to the centre ground since becoming leader in April 2020, after succeeding socialist Jeremy Corbyn following a landslide defeat by the Tories at the last election in 2019.

The former chief state prosecutor will tell the conference that he now leads “a changed Labour party, no longer in thrall to gesture politics, no longer a party of protest”.

Labour is now “a party of service” that puts “country first, party second”, he is due to say, according to extracts released in advance.

Despite being well ahead in the polls, Mr Starmer has faced criticism for being too cautious and for not clearly spelling out a vision for Britain.

Observers are keen to see whether he puts some flesh on the bones of his party’s policies during the speech or whether he decides not to reveal his hand too early, with the date of the election uncertain.

Mr Starmer on Sunday announced a £1.5 billion (S$2.5 billion) plan to tackle National Health Service waiting lists that have ballooned due to the impact of industrial action and a huge Covid-19 pandemic backlog.

And on the same day his deputy Angela Rayner kicked off the Labour conference, likely the last before the election, with a raft of pledges to strengthen workers’ rights.

Labour is expected to put the economy front and centre of its campaign, with Mr Starmer due to tell delegates on Tuesday that he will “get Britain building”, a reference to Mr Sunak’s announcement last week that he was scrapping part of a key high-speed rail project. AFP