KEIR Starmer has said the UK is not “even close to match-fit” for the new challenges facing the country – in an admission Yessers said bolstered the case for independence.

The Labour leader painted a grim vision of the state of the nation during his keynote speech at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’s Future of Britain conference on Tuesday.

Sketching a list of the major challenges facing the country at present Starmer said the world was in “a new age of insecurity” and said the solution for the UK was to focus on “growth, growth, growth”, mimicking his predecessor’s commitment to “education, education, education”.

Starmer said: “The in-tray of the next government will be like none other and without decisive leadership, will gnaw away at our collective sense of collective purpose and push us towards a learned political hopelessness. A mindset of decline.

“Now, to be honest, it’s impossible to list all of the challenges, we’d be here all day.

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“There’s the cost of living crisis, of course. Climate change, a recipe for long-term global instability.

“An ageing society, the biggest change in who we are since the Industrial Revolution.

The National:

“Artificial intelligence, a technology that will, there’s no doubt about this, reshape our economy and quickly.

“The changing balance of power in the world and an unforgiving global race, not just for jobs, but for the new materials and supply chains needed to sustain prosperity in this changing world.

“And then, as if that wasn’t enough, on top of it we have the mess of the last 13 years. A botched Brexit deal that strangled our economic dynamism.

“A mortgage bombshell that will blow up British homeownership.

“Infrastructure starved of investment. Wages, totally flat. Public services, on their knees. The worst period for British productivity since Napoleon.

“Make no mistake, it’s a new age of insecurity. And we’re not even close to match-fit.

“So we’ve got to get back on our feet, join the race, win the race and get our future back. We need three things: Growth, growth, growth.”

Scottish Greens MSP Ross Greer said: “Sir Keir Starmer is right that the Tories are not remotely match-fit, but his solution appears to be to double down on every single one of their failed policies.

"He has abandoned almost all of the progressive pledges he made when asking Labour members to vote for him, giving the clear impression that he never believed in them in the first place.

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"It's clearer than ever that Starmer's Labour Party is committed to implementing the same disastrous Brexit that he once opposed and even more of the same painful cuts to public services which have caused so much damage.

"It doesn't have to be like this. Scotland can do so much better than Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer.

"If we had the powers of a normal independent country we could build a fairer, greener and more equal future. We wouldn't have to choose between a party that would introduce a cruel and callous two-child benefit cap and 'rape clause' and another that would keep it in place for their own cynical political reasons."

Neale Hanvey, the Westminster leader of the Alba Party, said Scots could not “depend on the Labour Party to reverse obscene Tory policies”.

He said: “The Labour Party aim to pursue votes in middle England while betraying the needs and aspirations of people in Scotland and across the UK.

“The reality is that people in Scotland cannot depend on the Labour Party to reverse obscene Tory policies, like the two-child benefit cap, imposed by governments we haven’t voted for in generations.

“With independence, we will no longer need to spend millions of pounds mitigating the dangerous policies of governments we don’t vote for but instead build a fair and just society with a properly funded social security system which can begin to lift the quarter of a million children in Scotland out of poverty.”