Starmer’s conference speech is a hint that next year’s British election campaign will be filthy

Keir Starmer’s big conference speech in Liverpool may have started out as a glittering affair when a protester threw sparkly material over the Labour leader onstage, but he finished it with a dark warning that the next election will be a dirty one.

This has been a theme of Starmer’s appearances at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool this week. On Monday, he told a gathering of business leaders at a breakfast meeting that he expects the Conservative party to “go low” in the next campaign.

A day later, in his main conference address, he warned party members that the Tories will be “dangerous”. He described the governing party as having “completely severed its relationship with the future” and of being “prepared to scorch the earth just to get at us”.

“Wherever you think the line is, they’ve already got plans to cross it. They will be up for the fight,” he said. But Starmer also gave a hint that he may be prepared to “go low” too to meet his rivals head-on in a dirty campaign. Labour, he said, must be “ready to fight back”.

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That the Tories are limbering up to run a highly personalised campaign against Starmer in the run-up to next year’s election was obvious at last week’s Conservative party conference in Manchester. He was the subject of taunts onstage from a succession of cabinet members and also from prime minister Rishi Sunak. The Conservatives see the public’s perception of Starmer as a Labour weak link, which they intend to exploit.

[ Sunak will put himself at the centre of his party’s campaign as he draws a contrast with Labour’s Keir Starmer ]

Yet Labour has already demonstrated that it is prepared to meet fire with fire. Earlier this year, the party trialled a dirty approach by releasing a series of online attack ads targeting Sunak. They made questionable claims, such as suggesting Sunak “doesn’t think” adults convicted of sexually assaulting children go to prison. They also jibed at the prime minister’s heiress wife over her tax status.

Labour was heavily criticised in April when the initial online barrage of attack ads was launched. Privately, some Labour MPs wondered if the party had gone too far in the criticism of the prime minister. Labour HQ, however, was thrilled with the row it stirred up, believing that even if their party took some criticism, it was worth it to damage Sunak.

This week at conference in Liverpool, Starmer all but confirmed that Labour is still gearing up for a personalised battle, as he took a few skelps off Sunak in his setpiece address. With the Tories in a similar mode, next year’s election campaign could be Britain’s dirtiest in many years.