Keir Starmer admits Labour faces ‘tough’ local elections

Keir Starmer warned that Labour faces a “tough” set of local elections in May — his first test at the ballot box since he became party leader nearly a year ago.

Britain’s main opposition party is trying to play down expectations of any major advances in the elections on May 6 as the Conservative government enjoys a poll bounce due to the success of its Covid-19 vaccination programme.

While Labour could make gains in some English councils and see London Mayor Sadiq Khan returned to power comfortably, it is expected to perform badly in Scotland and fall short in its bid to take crucial English mayoralties such as the Tees Valley and the West Midlands.

“Our expectations are that we’re going to really struggle,” said one member of the shadow cabinet. At least 40m people are eligible to vote in the elections, which were delayed a year from May 2020 due to the Covid-19 crisis.

Launching Labour’s campaign on Thursday morning, Starmer tried to put the NHS at the heart of his offer to the public, saying that “a vote for Labour is a vote to support our nurses”.

The Labour leader called for a proper salary increase for nurses instead of the below-inflation rise of 1 per cent offered by Boris Johnson, prime minister.

Many Tory MPs believe Johnson will relent to pressure and deliver a new pay settlement — perhaps in a one-off payment to reflect nurses’ efforts during the pandemic — before the May polls.

Starmer claimed a vote for Labour was a vote to rebuild social care, reward key workers and deliver a fair economic recovery after the pandemic.

He also stressed the party was under new management after the hard left leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, his predecessor, who has since had the whip withdrawn by the parliamentary wing of the party.

After Starmer became leader in April 2020, just after the 2019 general election, Labour’s worst result for nearly a century, he led a revival in the opinion polls as he shifted the party back towards a less radical approach and held the government to account over its pandemic failures.

Yet while the two main parties were neck-and-neck at the end of last year the Tories have now established a significant poll lead.

Starmer himself has acknowledged that the vaccination programme has improved the Conservatives’ chances in the local elections, telling LBC radio earlier this week: “People go into the vaccine centre with anxiety written over [their] face and then you see people coming out the other end with a smile, it is an incredible feeling and of course that leads to a bounce . . . at the polls.”

At the same time Labour’s usual narrative — that it would invest more in public services than the Conservatives — has been scrambled by the £407bn that the Tory government has spent dealing with the pandemic and its economic fallout.

During the health emergency, the party’s leadership has trod a difficult path. Left-wingers have criticised Starmer for not attacking the government hard enough, while others have accused him of carping from the sidelines.

“We are not where we need to be in the polls, obviously we need to address that,” one senior figure said. “The size of the challenge for us is huge, the result in December 2019 was catastrophic, we lost everywhere.”