Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to the county was interrupted by climate protesters.

The Labour leader was giving a speech in Gillingham before two young people pulled out a banner and heckled him.

He was telling the audience how he wants to smash the “class ceiling” by boosting poorer children’s education, but was interrupted by protesters accusing him of U-turning on green policy.

The activists with the Green New Deal Rising group urged him not to scale down plans to borrow £28 billion a year to invest in green jobs and industry.

Sir Keir asked them to “let me finish” and said he would speak to them after his speech before they were led off the stage by security.

He was setting out his reforms if he wins the next election to set a goal of half a million more children reaching their early learning targets by 2030 as he expands on the party’s intention to improve teaching for the under-fives.

“I promise you this, whatever the obstacles to opportunity, wherever the barriers to hope, my Labour government will tear them down,” Sir Keir said.

“We will change Britain, break the link between where you start in life and where you end up.

“The earnings of our children should not be determined by those of their parents.”

But the protesters interrupted him to say they want a “green new deal right now”.

Green New Deal Rising said the two protesters were students who had been invited by the party to stand behind the leader as he spoke.

Fatima Ibrahim, co-director of the campaign, said: “If you’re going to use young people as props you should be interested to hear what they have to say.”

She said the group will “escalate” their tactics leading up to the Labour conference in the autumn.

“A core part of what we’ve asked is for Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer to meet with us. If we don’t hear back we’ll be forced to escalation.”

She said Labour represented an “opportunity to start a conversation” as opposed to the Conservatives, whom she accused of being on a “wrecking mission” and having “their head in the sand” regarding green issues.

The group said one of the protesters was student Dieudonne Bila, who said in a statement: “I disrupted Keir Starmer’s speech because I desperately want to see a future government committed to protecting people here and all over the world from the climate crisis.

“We won’t stand by and allow private companies to continue making billions as heating becomes unaffordable, or be silent in the face of extreme heat, flooding and droughts.”

Once the pair had been escorted off stage, Sir Keir told the audience to applause: “I think they may have missed the fact that the last mission I launched was on clean power by 2030 which is the single most effective way to get the green future that they and many others want.”

He denied backtracking on Labour’s flagship pledge to invest £28 billion a year on a green energy transition, after the party last month said it would ramp up spending rather that hit the sum in the first year of a Labour government.

“There’s no U-turn at all,” Sir Keir said when asked about it in the Q&A, insisting he was “doubling down on it” with his clean power by 2030 mission.

The former director of public prosecutions also condemned the “huge arrogance” involved in the disruptive protests of Just Stop Oil.

“When I put what they’re doing against what we set out in our mission about clean energy, about net zero, you can see the difference between protest and power,” he said, pointing to the contrast between “gluing yourself, interrupting, interfering with other people’s lives” and the “actual change” a Labour government can bring about.