CHANGE without cash and rebuilding without radicalism was the patchy prospectus offered to Britain by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer today.

He will instead combine the qualities of a healer, a moderniser and a builder in Downing Street, he pledged in his Liverpool speech designed to answer the pre-election question “why Labour?”

“People want our wounds to heal and we are the healers,” he said.

“People are looking to us because these challenges require a modern state and we are the modernisers.  

“They want us to build a new Britain and we are the builders.”

Setting an implausibly high bar, Sir Keir claimed that his government would emulate the achievements of all previous majority Labour governments.

He said: “In 1997 Labour had to rebuild a public realm. In 1964 it had to modernise the economy. In 1945 it had to rebuild Britain after the trauma of collective sacrifice. And in 2024 the challenge will be to do all three.”

His casserole speech pinched ingredients from many recipes.

Interchangeably with PM Rishi Sunak’s pitch last week, Sir Keir called for “an entirely new approach to politics” involving “governing for the long term” and fixing “tomorrow’s challenges today.”

Channelling Tony Blair he triangulated between “state” and “free market” but pledged that “private enterprise is the only way this country pays its way in the world.”

And there were inadvertent nods to his pseudo-Corbynite past with repeated invocations of the interests of working people and a condemnation of the Tories for having “wealth and opportunity concentrated in the hands of the few.”

As for his call to devolve power and “put communities in control,” this has been promised by all party leaders over the past 40 years and enacted by none.

Sir Keir’s most powerful passages touched popular chords, as when he listed the things he would end: “No more bonuses for people putting sewage in the water.

“No more pensioners freezing, while energy firms make record profits. No more government contract by the back door.

“No more cleaners being mocked as they scrub off the mess left by people holding illegal parties in Westminster.”

He appealed to Conservative voters horrified at the Tories’ descent “into the murky waters of populism and conspiracy” but warned that the government would fight dirty. 

“Wherever you think the line is, they’ve already got plans to cross it,” he said.

Sir Keir repeated earlier pledges by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves to “bulldoze” through planning constraints to build 1.5 million new homes and “the next generation of Labour new towns” in a forthcoming “decade of national renewal.”

A protester from direct action group People Demand Democracy, campaigning against inequality and climate change and for electoral reform, hijacked the start of Sir Keir’s speech, sprinkling glitter over him before being hauled away.

“The Labour Party has been captured, donors and lobbyists have more control over Keir Starmer than his members,” the protester said later.

Sir Keir had told fat cats at conference that they would ”be in government” at his side, and a Labour adviser was quoted today as saying that companies would have an “opportunity” when Labour needs “off the shelf” policies in a hurry, an offer not extended to unions or the membership.

FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said: “Labour must be the party of workers, not corporate interests.”

Momentum’s Hilary Schan warned that “by failing to back up” his promises with cash, “Keir has fatally undermined his own prospects. You can’t fix a broken country on the cheap.”