Sir Keir Starmer has opened the Labour Party’s annual conference with a rendition of God save the King in a move already branded as ‘excessively nationalist’.
This is the first time the national anthem has been sung at the party’s conference and there were fears it would be met with boos from the audience.
A video shows the Labour leader describing the late Queen as ‘this great country’s greatest monarch’ in his opening speech.
In a tribute he said: ‘She created a special, personal relationship with all of us. A relationship based on service and devotion to our country.
‘Even now, after the mourning period has passed, it still feels impossible to imagine a Britain without her.’
His words were met with a round of applause from the delegates in Liverpool.
A minute’s silence was then held in the sovereign’s memory, before the politician started singing the anthem.
Sir Keir was backed by members of the shadow cabinet, deputy leader, Angela Rayner, and the party chair, Anneliese Dodds.
Many in the hall were seen singing the anthem and applause was heard once it concluded.
Concerns were expressed by some about the decision to sing the anthem, with a leaflet handed out by Labour Left Internationalists saying: ‘As democratic, secular, internationalist socialists, we certainly won’t be, and we suspect a lot of other delegates won’t either.’
It added: ‘The degree of the leadership’s doubling down on monarchism is remarkable and almost comic.’
Sir Keir’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, has already criticised the move, arguing there was no precedent for singing it.
In an interview with the BBC, he said it was ‘very, very odd’ for a Labour conference to sing God Save the King.
The politician, has lost the Labour whip in Parliament, said: ‘They have never done it before, there has never been any demand to do it.
‘We don’t as a country routinely go around singing the national anthem at every single event we go to.
‘We don’t sing in schools, we don’t have the raising of the flag as they do in the USA and other places.
‘We are not that sort of, what I would call, excessively nationalist.’
The event attended by Labour MP Richard Burgon centred on the future of the monarchy in the wake of the Queen’s death.
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