SACK Starmer was the message from Labour members as delegates gathered in Liverpool today for a storm-shadowed annual conference.

Already reeling from polling showing him to be the most unpopular Prime Minister since records began, Sir Keir suffered a new blow from party members themselves.

A poll of more than 1,200 party members conducted by Survation for Labour List found that 53 per cent thought Sir Keir should quit before the next election.

Only 31 per cent believed he should stay in Downing Street while 16 per cent offered no opinion.

As to how Labour was governing, nearly two-thirds answered “badly" — figures not much better than for the country as a whole.

These figures are grist to the mill of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who launched a brazen bid for Sir Keir’s job on the eve of conference, outlining alternative policies on tax and welfare and pledging to break from the domination of the bond market over government strategy.

In further bad news for Labour, Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite the union — the party’s largest affiliate — warned again of possible disaffiliation.

She warned that November’s Budget, already the subject of fraught speculation, might be the tipping point for many members. It would be “an absolutely critical point of us knowing whether direction is going to change.”

Ms Graham added: “My members, whether it’s public-sector workers all the way through to defence, are asking, ‘What is happening here?’

“Now when that question cannot be answered, when we’re effectively saying, ‘Look, actually we cannot answer why we’re still affiliated’, then absolutely I think our members will choose to disaffiliate and that time is getting close.”

Under these multiple pressures, Sir Keir and his advisers have decided to mount a more robust challenge to the hard-right Reform UK, ending a year in which ministers have pandered to its prejudices and ducked confronting the party over migration or anything else.

The premier called Nigel Farage’s plans to remove settled migrants from the country as “racist” and “immoral,” language he has avoided hitherto.

He added: “We have got the fight of our lives ahead of us because we’ve got to take on Reform and we’ve got to beat them. So now is not the time for introspection or navel-gazing.

“There is a fight that we are all in together, and every single member of our party and our movement — actually, everyone who cares about what this country is, whether they vote Labour or otherwise — it’s the fight of our lives for who we are as a country.”

However, Sir Keir was careful not to allow the new anti-fascist rhetoric to run away with him. “It is one thing to say we’re going to remove illegal migrants, people who have no right to be here. I’m up for that,” he said.

Beyond that, the premier pleaded “give me space” to solve Britain’s problems and suggested that Andy Burnham, who his outriders have compared to Liz Truss, was doing a fine job in Manchester with the clear implication that he should stay there.

The conference itself was hardly suffused with this new fighting spirit after what has probably been Labour’s worst year in office since 1931. 

Not more than half-full, delegates rose to applaud rote speeches from party officials.

Behind the stage is an incongruous backdrop — a scene of rolling countryside with a union flag superimposed and not a human in sight, it could as well have adorned a Reform rally.

This scene is accompanied by the slogan “renew Britain,” leaving the impression that this renewal would return the country to a green and pleasant pre-industrial past.

The only ovation infused with genuine vigour was for someone who was not there, when Housing Secretary Steve Reed praised his departed predecessor Angela Rayner, the party’s last connection to enthusiasm it appears.