Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to make the UK the fastest-growing financial system within the G7 if his opposition Labour occasion wins the subsequent basic election.

The promise was one in every of 5 long-term missions for the nation because the Labour chief set out his imaginative and prescient for presidency.

Starmer, who has dragged his occasion in direction of the centre floor after its “onerous left” interval beneath his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, supplied a imaginative and prescient paying homage to the New Labour period beneath Tony Blair, who gained three elections for the occasion a technology in the past.

“By the tip of Labour’s first authorities we are going to ship the very best sustained progress within the G7,” he mentioned in a speech in Manchester entitled 5 Missions for a Higher Britain. “It should be powered by good jobs and powerful productiveness in each a part of the nation.”

Starmer mentioned “mission-driven” insurance policies to realize this would come with a “credible” industrial technique, fixing the Brexit take care of the EU, selling apprenticeships, shaking up childcare and a reformed planning system — together with a “sound” fiscal strategy.

His different “nationwide missions for nationwide renewal” can be reforming the NHS, tackling crime, breaking down obstacles to alternative and making Britain a “clear power superpower”.

He promised to introduce “clear and measurable” targets for every concern, for instance the occasion’s present 2030 decarbonisation goal for the electrical energy system.

The 5 pledges mirror the way in which that Rishi Sunak, the Conservative prime minister, has additionally issued a listing of 5 precedence areas he needs to sort out earlier than the subsequent basic election, anticipated earlier than the tip of subsequent yr.

Starmer mentioned that attaining greater financial progress was key to his intention of bettering Britain’s stretched public companies.

“If progress during the last 13 years had been as sturdy as beneath the final Labour authorities we’d have £40bn additional to spend on colleges and the NHS and not using a single additional penny in tax,” he mentioned.

Channelling the query famously posed by former US president Ronald Reagan within the 1980 race, he mentioned: “Critically, ask your self: do I really feel higher off right this moment than I did 13 years in the past?”

Starmer mentioned a Labour authorities would use “new pondering” to provide you with “new options” to the nation’s challenges: “New methods of harnessing the ingenuity that’s throughout us.”

“I’m not involved about whether or not funding or experience comes from the general public or personal sector, I simply need to get the job completed,” he mentioned.

Momentum, the grassroots pro-Corbyn marketing campaign group, accused Starmer of getting “ditched” the leftwing insurance policies he espoused three years in the past — when he gained the management — in favour of “reheated Third-Approach Blairism”.

Interviewed on the BBC At this time programme earlier than the speech about why he had dropped lots of his pledges from 2020, when he ran for the management, Starmer mentioned the circumstances had modified due to the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Labour chief mentioned he had dropped insurance policies corresponding to taking water, power and the Royal Mail into public possession after analysing the fee to the general public purse. “We might have to spend so much of public cash on public possession,” he mentioned.

Greg Arms, the Conservative occasion chair, mentioned it was Starmer’s eleventh relaunch as Labour chief and that he had damaged all 10 pledges he made to grow to be occasion chief.

“Starmer has by no means made a pledge he intends to maintain. He’ll say something if the politics swimsuit him,” Arms mentioned.