An angry Sir Keir Starmer has said that his father would be “turning in his grave” at the way a many members of the audience in a Sky News election event laughed when he said that he had worked in a factory.
There was laughter from several members audience at the Sky News leaders’ event in Grimsby when the Labour leader – who was being grilled by journalists on the channel – said that his father was a tool maker.
Speaking to GB News in Crewe in the north west of England hours after unveiling his party’s election manifesto, he hit out at the broadcaster’s audience for “disrespecting” his father’s background and said that it showed disrespect “for working people”.
Starmer said it was wrong if members of the Sky audience to laugh at someone because they worked in a factory.
He said: “My Dad worked in a factory all his life. He felt people disrespected him.
“It hit a nerve last night. He felt that – in the usual conversation when someone says ‘what do you do for a living?’ when socially, he would say ‘I work in a factory’, and there would be a pause, and nobody quite knew what to say.
“And he felt really disrespected. It caused him in his life to withdraw from social engagements.
“He didn’t do it much later in life, because it was raw to him that he should be disrespected because he worked in a factory.
Members of last night’s TV audience laughed when the Labour leader said his dad was a tool maker
PA
“So when someone laughed last night, my Dad that would have turned in his grave.”
Asked if Starmer felt the laughter was evidence of snobbishness towards his father, he replied: “I don’t know what caused someone to laugh, but if you’re laughing at someone because they work in a factory – that is the one thing that I think had a massive impact on someone like my dad, the disrespect.
“And it’s in me. You can see I’m angry about it, I am frustrated, because I will never allow that sort of disrespect for working people to be any part of my plans, any part of the Britain that I want as the future.
Sir Keir Starmer said he was ‘proud of what my parents did’
GB NEWS
“So I will proudly tell anybody who will listen that my Dad worked in a factory. He was a tool maker, very good toolmaker. He loved his trade. And my Mum was a nurse and she loved being a nurse. We didn’t have a lot of money.
“And I’m proud of what my parents did.
“And yes, I don’t like it when people laugh at my dad, because he worked in a factory.”