Keir Starmer 'bomb-proofing' Labour pledges as he tries to unseat ...

Labour leader Keir Starmer said he’s “bomb-proofing” the party’s pre-election promises to the public, as he defended a lack of new policies in his big address to the U.K. opposition party’s annual conference.

Starmer — who current polls suggest is on course to become Britain’s next prime minister — delivered a more personal address than usual to the party faithful on Tuesday.

He touched on his background, aimed to tap into anxiety about the cost of living, and pitched Labour as offering hope after 13 years of Conservative government.

But he faced criticism in some quarters for not offering more policy meat. Starmer promised a major shake-up of Britain’s planning system to spur housebuilding, but his speech was absent the traditional “rabbit out of the hat” policy moment party leaders sometimes use to add drama to a conference speech.

The left-wing Momentum campaign group said Starmer had been relying on “vague promises of reform and a magic growth tree” to improve public services.

Defending the lack of new announcements in a BBC interview Wednesday morning, Starmer said he felt “just another bit of policy wasn’t what was needed.”

Instead, he argued, the address “needed to be an emotional connection with the future, a sense of, ‘does Keir Starmer, does Labour, understand what people have been through these past 13 years?’”

“I think too many people feel that after the last 13 years … the hope has been beaten out of the voters by the government and we had to restore that,” he added.

Starmer insisted Labour’s housebuilding promises came coupled with a rigorous “plan for delivery,” and pitched this as part of a wider exercise of road-testing Labour’s ideas ahead of an expected election race next year.

Speaking to Times Radio in a separate interview, Starmer said: “One of the things I’ve been doing in the last six to 12 months is to bombproof everything we put out as a party. Some people have interpreted those shifts of position as somehow a weakness.

“Actually, it’s a strength to say I will not put anything before the electorate, after what they’ve been through, which I do not think is credible that can’t be delivered.”

Starmer was speaking as Labour’s Liverpool conference — which may be the last before a general election — enters its final day. The opposition leader’s Tuesday speech was preceded by a protest which saw Starmer covered in glitter.

Conservative Chair Greg Hands quipped that Starmer had offered “more of the same short term political decision making of the last 30 years that has failed Britain — all glitter, no substance.”