Sir Keir Starmer’s speech pledging to smash the “class ceiling” by boosting poorer children’s education was interrupted by protesters accusing him of U-turning on green policy.
Two young people who had been part of the backdrop to the Labour leader’s address in Gillingham pulled out a banner and heckled him for watering down his climate ambition.
The activists with the Green New Deal Rising group urged him not to scale down plans to borrow £28 billion a year to invest in green jobs and industry.
Sir Keir asked them to “let me finish” and said he would speak to them after his speech before they were led off the stage by security.
He was setting out his reforms if he wins the next election to set a goal of half a million more children reaching their early learning targets by 2030 as he expands on the party’s intention to improve teaching for the under-fives.
“I promise you this, whatever the obstacles to opportunity, wherever the barriers to hope, my Labour government will tear them down,” Sir Keir said.
“We will change Britain, break the link between where you start in life and where you end up.
“The earnings of our children should not be determined by those of their parents.”
But the protesters interrupted him to say they want a “green new deal right now”.
The Green New Deal Rising said one of the protesters was student Dieudonne Bila, who said in a statement: “I disrupted Keir Starmer’s speech because I desperately want to see a future government committed to protecting people here and all over the world from the climate crisis.
“We won’t stand by and allow private companies to continue making billions as heating becomes unaffordable, or be silent in the face of extreme heat, flooding and droughts.”
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