By Elizabeth Piper and Andrew MacAskill

LIVERPOOL, England (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called on his party on Sunday to stop “navel gazing” and unite to defeat Reform UK, accusing the populist party of planning to launch a “racist policy” of mass deportations if it wins power.

Starmer, whose governing Labour is well behind Reform in the polls, kicked off his party’s annual conference by issuing a rallying cry to party members to direct their anger towards Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform, rather than his leadership.

“I’m saying we have got the fight of our lives ahead of us, because we’ve got to take on Reform. We’ve got to beat them and so now is not the time for introspection or navel gazing,” he told BBC news. “We need to be in that fight united.”

UK PM DEF

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