By David Hughes
Copyright standard
Sir Keir Starmer pleaded with Labour to give him space to lead the party in the “fight of our lives” against Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The Prime Minister acknowledged the public’s frustration with the time taken to deliver the change people voted for in last year’s landslide general election win.
But he insisted he can turn the situation around and called on Labour to end the “introspection” and “navel-gazing” as speculation mounted about his position.
In an interview on BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg as Labour’s conference began in Liverpool, Sir Keir said there is “a lot of hard work to do” for his administration to deliver the change promised as he secured the election victory last year.
The scale of the challenge facing Sir Keir has been underlined by a poll indicating Mr Farage could be on course for Downing Street, with Labour reduced to just 90 seats.
The slump in both Labour’s poll ratings and Sir Keir’s personal approval has fuelled leadership speculation, with Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham suggesting he has been privately urged by MPs to challenge the Prime Minister.
Sir Keir said he will be “judged at the next election” on whether he has improved living standards, the NHS and security.
“I’ll be judged at the end of that five years, and quite right too,” he said. “But I just need the space to get on and do what we need to do, to do those three things above all else, but also – in a world which is more volatile than any of us have known for a very long time – to ensure that the United Kingdom is safe and secure.
“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.
“So now is not the time for introspection or navel-gazing. There is a fight that we are all in together and every single member of our party and our movement, actually everyone who cares about what this country is, whether they vote Labour or otherwise, it’s the fight of our lives for who we are as a country. We need to be in that fight united, not navel-gazing.”
Asked how much trouble he is in, Sir Keir said: “We’ve got a lot of hard work to do.”
He highlighted achievements including increasing NHS appointments and rolling out an expansion of childcare.
“We inherited a complete mess, a broken economy, a broken public services,” the Prime Minister said.
“We said we would change that, and I always said that would take time. But I do understand people are frustrated.”
During the interview, Sir Keir:
– Insisted “the manifesto stands” when asked to rule out a hike in VAT as Rachel Reeves prepares for a potentially difficult Budget on November 26. Labour’s election document promised not to increase the tax,
– Described Reform UK’s immigration policy, which would include scrapping indefinite leave to remain, as “racist” and “immoral”.
– Defended plans to introduce digital IDs, claiming it would allow the authorities to “know exactly who is working in our economy, and it will help us enforce the rules that are there”.
– Said he will put an end to taxpayer-funded taxis for asylum seekers “as soon as we can”.
The scale of the challenge facing Sir Keir was underlined by a poll of nearly 20,000 people and modelling which suggested Mr Farage could enter No 10 with a majority of 96, with Labour reduced to just 90 seats and the Tories pushed into fourth place at Westminster behind the Liberal Democrats.
Multilevel regression and post-stratification (MPR) techniques were used to estimate individual constituency results, suggesting Reform would take 373 seats while Labour would be left clinging on predominantly in urban centres such as London, and university towns.
The More in Common MRP model in the Sunday Times was based on a representative sample of 19,520 people between August 8 and September 15.
In a sign of the pressure within his own movement, the leader of Labour’s biggest union backer Unite suggested the Budget was a make-or-break moment for its financial support.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said it was getting “harder and harder to justify” affiliation with Labour and that the “time is getting close” to make a choice.
She told Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: “The Budget is an absolutely critical point of us knowing whether direction is going to change.”
She added: “Those fiscal rules need to be changed. Other countries are doing it. We should stop dancing around our handbag and do that. If that Budget is essentially nothing, it’s insipid.
“I think we’ve got a real problem our hands, because without the money to make the change, then nothing is going to change.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting condemned Mr Farage’s plans to raise the earnings threshold for migrants in the UK, saying Labour had a “responsibility” to challenge the party’s message.
Speaking at an event organised by Labour Together at the conference in Liverpool, he said: “What he said about sending home people who earn less than £60,000 a year.
“That would include people in my extended family, that would include our nurses, our care workers, our doctors, our teachers, our friends, our neighbours.
“We have a responsibility, I think, at this conference and over the coming years to send a message to those people: Farage wants you to go home, we say you are home.”
A Reform UK spokesman said the party has “not set a figure yet for the new visa, however we did also announce an acute skills shortage visa last Monday for areas such as doctors and carers”.
“Labour have once again been caught lying,” he said.
“Labour’s message to the country today is clear: pay hundreds of billions for foreign nationals to live off the state forever, or Labour will call you racist.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch claimed Sir Keir had left the door open to a VAT increase at the Budget.
“Claiming that ‘the manifesto stands’ is not the same as saying ‘no rise in VAT’,” she said. “The PM must rule out hiking VAT immediately, or working people will fear another Labour tax bombshell in the budget.”
