Monday’s business day was a sell-out and was billed as including ‘In Conversation and Q&A sessions with Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Jonathan Reynolds’ alongside ‘a networking business lunch with key Labour politicians’.

Sir Keir appeared for an event alongside Google UK’s managing director Debbie Weinstein.

There was also a Q and A with Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds

Monday’s business day was a sell-out and was billed as including ‘In Conversation and Q&A sessions with Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Jonathan Reynolds’ alongside ‘a networking business lunch with key Labour politicians’.

Sir Keir appeared for an event alongside Google UK’s managing director Debbie Weinstein.

But the lunch was branded disappointing, with attendees contrasting it with last year’s Tory business event, which included a speech from then PM Rishi Sunak and a cabinet minister sitting at each table.

Last night Sir Keir said people must ‘face the storm’ in order to make a ‘Britain built to last’ as he warned of further tough decisions to turn the country around.

In his first Labour Party conference speech as Prime Minister, Sir Keir set out plans to ‘clear out the Tory rot’, with a new era of political leadership creating a country ‘renewed by respect and service’.

In a speech briefly disrupted by a pro-Palestine heckler, he said the ‘wounds of trust’ left by the Conservatives needed to be healed as he acknowledged that addressing that legacy would require unpopular decisions.

‘If they were popular, they’d be easy.

‘But the cost of filling that black hole in our public finances, that will be shared fairly,’ he told activists in Liverpool.

‘We will get the welfare bill down because we will tackle long-term sickness and support people back to work.

‘We will make every penny work for you because we will root out waste and go after tax avoiders.

‘There will be no stone left unturned.’

But there would be ‘no return to Tory austerity’, he said.

Addressing criticism of the decision to means-test winter fuel payments, he insisted ‘every pensioner will be better off with Labour’ but said he understood people’s concerns.

‘The risk of showing to the world, as the Tories did, that this country does not fund its policies properly, that is a risk we can never take again.

‘Stabilising our economy is the first step of this long-term plan.

‘The only way we can keep prices low, cut NHS waiting lists and secure the triple lock so that every pensioner in this country, every pensioner, will be better off with Labour.’

He said decisions such as squeezing winter fuel payments or releasing prisoners early were due to the state the Tories left the country in.

‘For 14 years the Tories performed the politics of easy answers rather than use the power of government to serve our country,’ he said.

‘Yet still those wounds of trust must be healed.’

In a message to ‘anyone nervous about the difficult road ahead’ he promised there would be ‘light at the end of this tunnel’.

But he said people had to accept the trade-offs that reforming the country and renewing its infrastructure would require.

‘If the last few years have shown us anything, it’s that if you bury your head because things are difficult, your country goes backwards.

‘So if we want justice to be served some communities must live close to new prisons.

‘If we want to maintain support for the welfare state, then we will legislate to stop benefit fraud. Do everything we can to tackle worklessness.

‘If we want cheaper electricity, we need new pylons overground otherwise the burden on taxpayers is too much.’

For home ownership to be a ‘credible aspiration’ for all then ‘every community’ would have to contribute with extra building.

And to tackle illegal migration ‘we can’t pretend there’s a magical process that allows you to return people here unlawfully without accepting that process will also grant some people asylum’.

He added: ‘If we want to be serious about levelling-up, then we must be proud to be the party of wealth creation.

‘Unashamed to partner with the private sector. ‘