Keir Starmer has hit out at the “idiot” who tried to disrupt his speech to the Labour Party conference.
In a major security breach, the man rushed the stage and threw glitter over the Labour leader as he prepared to address delegates in Liverpool.
As shocked activists and MPs looked on, he then shouted: “True democracy is citizen-led.
Politics needs an update. We demand a people’s house.”
The man was eventually tackled by security guards, who dragged him off the stage.
Starmer had to take off his jacket, which was covered in glitter, before finally starting his speech.
The Labour leader said to cheers: “If he thinks that bothers me he doesn’t know me.
“Protest or power, that’s why we’ve changed,” he added to loud cheers.
Asked about the incident on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Starmer said: “This conference is our chance to put the positive case for Labour, so I was absolutely determined in my own mind ‘I’m not going to let this idiot ruin four hard years of work by me and my team’.
“And that’s why I took my jacket off, rolled my sleeves up and got on with it, notwithstanding the bits of glitter which were still stuck to my shirt and to my hands.”
Campaign group People Demand Democracy later said they were behind the protest and posted a video of the incident on X (formerly Twitter).
They said: “We demand a fair proportional voting system and a permanent legally-binding national House of Citizens, selected by democratic lottery to tackle the major crises facing the UK: inequality, corrupt politics, climate and so on.”