Sir Keir Starmer considered quitting after 2021 local elections and Hartlepool loss
Sir Keir Starmer has admitted he considered quitting as Labour leader after the party lost both the Hartlepool by-election and council seats in 2021.
Speaking to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby ahead of tomorrow’s contests, Sir Keir called it “a low point”, with his party recording a net loss of eight councils, as well as the North East constituency – which had been held by Labour since the 1970s, but went to the Conservatives on the night.
“I did [consider quitting] because I didn’t feel that I should be bigger than the party and that if I couldn’t bring about the change, perhaps there should be a change,” he said.
“But actually, in the end, I reflected on it, talked to very many people and doubled down and determined, no, it is the change in the Labour Party we need.”
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Sir Keir said he felt “vindicated” by his decision to stay on “because we are now a changed party, nobody argues with that”.
He added: “And the biggest change is we are now a party that confidently and proudly says country first, party second. That is a changed Labour Party.”
Voters will be heading to the polls on Thursday for a range of local council and mayoral elections, as well as a by-election in Blackpool South following the resignation of its Tory MP Scott Benton.
But reflecting on the losses his party suffered the last time the seats were up for grabs, the Labour leader told Beth Rigby: “Oh yes, it was the low point and it really hit me because my job was to turn around the Labour Party and take us from defeat to success.
“Losing hurts and it should hurt in politics, because this isn’t about me, it is about whether the Labour Party can come back into government and serve working people. So yes, it was a very, very low moment.”
The Conservatives celebrated their win in Hartlepool with an inflatable version of their leader, Boris Johnson. Pic: Reuters
However, Sir Keir said the experience – which came around a year after he took over the party and while Boris Johnson was enjoying a surge in popularity in so-called Red Wall seats – led him to “double down and turbocharge the change that we needed”.
“So, in that respect, retrospectively, it was a good thing because it forced that onward pace, but I am not going to pretend it wasn’t a really hard time.”
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Thursday’s vote is predicted to be a different story for Labour, which has come out of the shadows of their worst-ever loss in the 2019 general election and when they are soaring ahead of the Conservatives in the polls.
But Sir Keir would not put a target on the number of council seats or mayoralties he hoped to win by the end of the counts, saying instead he just wanted his party to “show progress”.
“We have to show that people have the confidence and the trust to vote for this changed Labour Party so we do need to show that progress,” he said.
“The polls don’t predict the future, the polls don’t change the country, but I’ll be looking for that progress because it is really important in the locals and the mayoral elections, but also because of the story it tells for the change we need at the general election.”
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Meanwhile, the Conservatives were playing down their prospects ahead of Thursday’s vote, with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt saying he expected it to be a “difficult day” for his party.
Speaking to The Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge, he said: “We are very realistic. “We have been in power a long time and a government in office can often get punished in the local elections.
“It happened to Tony Blair in 2001 and 2005 and we are expecting it to be a difficult day tomorrow.”
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt appeared to be managing expectations when he spoke to Sky News’ Sophy Ridge. Pic: Sky News
Mr Hunt added: “Tony Blair lost… councillors and David Cameron lost hundreds of councillors in the run up to the 2015 election, so we are expecting to see significant losses, that often happens in local elections.
“But what we say to people is, look, this may be a moment where you want to express a view about the national picture, but actually the local services you depend on will be decided by how you vote – and if you want better public services as independently audited time after time, and lower taxes, then you should vote Conservative tomorrow.”
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Politics
Badenoch pulls off first conference speech as leader, but it is less clear if this will be her last
There’s no question that Kemi Badenoch’s on the ropes after a low-energy first year as leader that has seen the Conservative Party slide backwards by pretty much every metric.
But on Wednesday, the embattled leader came out swinging with a show-stopping pledge to scrap stamp duty, which left the hall delirious. “I thought you’d like that one,” she said with a laugh as party members cheered her on.
A genuine surprise announcement – many in the shadow cabinet weren’t even told – it gave the Conservatives and their leader a much-needed lift after what many have dubbed the lost year.
Politics latest: Stamp duty to be axed under Tories
Ms Badenoch with her husband, Hamish. Pic: PA
Ms Badenoch tried to answer that criticism this week with a policy blitz, headlined by her promise on stamp duty.
This is a leader giving her party some red meat to try to help her party at least get a hearing from the public, with pledges on welfare, immigration, tax cuts and policing.
In all of it, a tacit admission from Ms Badenoch and her team that as politics speeds up, they have not kept pace, letting Reform UK and Nigel Farage run ahead of them and grab the microphone by getting ahead of the Conservatives on scrapping net zero targets or leaving the ECHR in order to deport illegal migrants more easily.
Ms Badenoch is now trying to answer those criticisms and act.
At the heart of her offer is £47bn of spending cuts in order to pay down the nation’s debt pile and fund tax cuts such as stamp duty.
All of it is designed to try to restore the party’s reputation for economic competence, against a Labour Party of tax rises and a growing debt burden and a Reform party peddling “fantasy economics”.
She needs to do something, and fast. A YouGov poll released on the eve of her speech put the Conservatives joint third in the polls with the Lib Dems on 17%.
That’s 10 percentage points lower than when Ms Badenoch took power just under a year ago. The crisis, mutter her colleagues, is existential. One shadow cabinet minister lamented to me this week that they thought it was “50-50” as to whether the party can survive.
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(L-R) Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith, shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins and shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly. Pic: PA
Ms Badenoch had to do two things in her speech on Wednesday: the first was to try to reassert her authority over her party. The second was to get a bit of attention from the public with a set of policies that might encourage disaffected Tories to look at her party again.
On the first point, even her critics would have to agree that she had a successful conference and has given herself a bit of space from the constant chatter about her leadership with a headline-grabbing policy that could give her party some much-needed momentum.
On the second, the promise of spending control coupled with a retail offer of tax cuts does carve out a space against the Labour government and Reform.
But the memory of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget, the chaos of Boris Johnson’s premiership, and the failure of Sunak to cut NHS waiting lists or tackle immigration still weigh on the Conservative brand.
Ms Badenoch might have revived the room with her speech, but whether that translates into a wider revival around the country is very hard to read.
Ms Badenoch leaves Manchester knowing she pulled off her first conference speech as party leader: what she will be less sure about is whether it will be her last.
I thought she tacitly admitted that to me when she pointedly avoided answering the question of whether she would resign if the party goes backwards further in the English council, Scottish parliament and Welsh Senedd elections next year.
“Let’s see what the election result is about,” was her reply.
That is what many in her party are saying too, because if Ms Badenoch cannot show progress after 18 months in office, she might see her party turn to someone else.
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