Latest updates: Labour leader says he wants pupils to have debating lessons as he lays out party’s plans to ‘break down barriers to opportunity’
Good morning. Keir Starmer has been giving speeches fleshing out the details of the five missions for Labour he announced in February, and today he is talking about the fifth and final one – “to break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage, for every child”. As he explains in an article in the Sun, he wants to break down the “class ceiling” which he says holds back people who were not born privileged. He says:
This is personal to me.
There was nothing about my working-class upbringing that suggested I would end up as the country’s most senior prosecutor or the leader of the Labour Party.
Talk is the currency of politics. It is our way of negotiating, deliberating, persuading and coming to decisions. Talk is also the currency of learning – how we develop and shape our ideas, deepen our thinking, explore subject matter and share our thoughts and feelings.
That’s why I want speaking skills, sometimes called “oracy”, to play an important part in Labour’s plans for a reformed school curriculum.
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