Sir Keir Starmer has told voters he is a socialist who will put the country before the Labour Party, whilst also distancing himself from his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.
The Labour leader, who has regularly been seen as a centrist politician, said he is a "progressive" politician who will put the "party second".
Putting distance between himself and Corbyn, Starmer told GB News the party is now "unrecognisable from the party of 2019".
He added: "I did that for a reason, because I thought that when we got rejected as badly as we did in 2019.
Sir Keir Starmer has told voters he is a socialist who will put the country before the Labour Party, whilst also distancing himself from his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn
PA
"You don’t look to the voters and say what on earth were you doing? You look to yourself, you look to your party and we have changed this party fundamentally.
"And now we are absolutely country first, party second with a plan for the future of Britain to take us forward.
"We are a changed Labour Party and that is absolutely fundamental to everything I have done over the last four and a half years since I have been leader of this party."
Asked if he would describe himself as a socialist, he told the BBC: "Yes, I would describe myself as a socialist. I describe myself as a progressive.
"I’d describe myself as somebody who always puts the country first and party second."
During the 2020 Labour leadership campaign, Starmer said his politics is driven by "deep inequalities" in the UK.
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He told the Camden New Journal: “I am a socialist. For me, what I’m driven by in this is the very deep inequalities that we’ve now got across the country of every sort: Income, wealth, health, influence, it’s deeply ingrained.
"I believe that in order to change that you’ve got to do fundamental change and shift power and wealth and I think that we need to do things more radically than we had envisaged in the past.
"For me, it’s a very practical application."
