Labour can’t ‘turn taps on’ for struggling councils, Sir Keir Starmer warns at local election launch

Published

1 year ago

March 28, 2024

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Sir Keir Starmer has warned that Labour “can’t pretend that we can turn the taps on” to help struggling councils if he wins the next general election.

The Labour leader was speaking in Dudley at the launch of his party’s campaign for the local elections on 2 May, which are taking place against the backdrop of a bleak financial picture for councils across the country.

One in five council bosses have said they think it’s likely or fairly likely they will go bankrupt in the next 15 months, while the Local Government Association, which represents local authorities, has said there is a £4bn funding shortfall over the next two years.

Asked by Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby whether he would “commit that money”, Sir Keir replied: “Councils of all political stripes are struggling with the lack of funding they’ve had over a prolonged period.

“And we need to turn that around – we will do that.”

Politics latest: Starmer asked if he’s a ‘Tory in disguise’

Although he did not promise additional funding, he did suggest funding settlement arrangements could be altered to help councils – suggesting one-year settlements had been detrimental to councils’ budgets.

“I think there is scope for different kinds of funding settlements,” he said.

“Talk to any council leader and they’ll say the one-year settlements are very difficult for us because we can’t spend money effectively and as well as we should.

“So it’s hard because there isn’t enough money. It’s even harder because it’s a one-year settlement. We can change that around with a three-year settlement.”

The shadow hanging over Labour policies is the dire state of public finances

Rob Powell

Political correspondent

@robpowellnews

While Sir Keir Starmer’s local election launch contained little new in the way of policy, it was still one of the clearest outlines of what drives the Labour leader as a politician and what would propel him in government.

Put simply – it is about restoring pride in the places people live and injecting a sense of integrity back into the workforces of those areas.

In a theme we’ll likely see returned to throughout the general election campaign, Sir Keir used the language of football to sketch this out – referring to the Potters of Stoke, the Glassboys of Stourbridge and the Hatters of Stockport.

Pride of place linked with the integrity of work given form through the plain-speaking language of football.

None of these identified problems are new.

This is the well of angst that lay behind the Brexit vote. This is the concept of ‘left behind’ communities Theresa May vowed to address. This is the problem to be solved through Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda.

So why should voters believe that this leader will prevail when so many others have failed? On this, there is still a considerable blank space. The answer being given today is devolution.

If local people are given more power over how to spend their money, this argument goes, they will spend it better and waste less.

The shadow hanging over all this is the dire state of the public finances. Or to put it another way, what many places need is cold hard cash.

The fiscal constraints Labour appears to be wrapping around itself means that money is not there though. Squaring that circle will be the central tension within both this local election campaign and the coming race for Downing Street.

He added: “I can’t pretend that we can turn the taps on, pretend the damage hasn’t been done to the economy. It has. The way out of that is to grow our economy.”

At the end of last year, councils told residents they should be prepared for reduced services and tax rises due to increasing cost and demand pressures.

In Birmingham, where the Labour-run local authority declared bankruptcy after being hit with a £760m bill to settle equal pay claims, council tax will rise by 21% over the next two years while £300m in cuts will be brought in over the same period.

At the campaign launch, Sir Keir said it was “unforgivable” the Tories did not follow through on their pledge to level up left-behind areas of the UK and said he had hoped to launch “a different election campaign here today” but could not because the “prime minister bottled it”.

The Labour leader said Rishi Sunak wanted “one last drawn-out summer tour with his beloved helicopter” and added: “We need to send him another message, show his party once again that their time is up, the dithering must stop, the date must be set.”

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt claimed Labour’s local election launch was a “smokescreen” and that when it was in office the party “devolved no powers to local authorities”.

Politics

SEC Chair calls tokenization an ‘innovation’ in sign of regulatory shift

Published

6 hours ago

July 2, 2025

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<div>SEC Chair calls tokenization an 'innovation' in sign of regulatory shift</div>

In a media interview, Chair Paul Atkins pledged to empower businesses to innovate through tokenization.

Politics

Just 25% of public think Sir Keir Starmer will win next election – with welfare row partly to blame

Published

9 hours ago

July 2, 2025

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Just 25% of public think Sir Keir Starmer will win next election - with welfare row partly to blame

Only a quarter of British adults think Sir Keir Starmer will win the next general election, as the party’s climbdown over welfare cuts affects its standing with the public.

A fresh poll by Ipsos, shared with Sky News, also found 63% do not feel confident the government is running the country competently, similar to levels scored by previous Conservative administrations under Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak in July 2022 and February 2023, respectively.

Politics latest: ‘A moment of intense peril’ for PM

The survey of 1,080 adults aged 18-75 across Great Britain was conducted online between 27 and 30 June 2025, when Labour began making the first of its concessions, suggesting the party’s turmoil over its own benefits overhaul is partly to blame.

The prime minister was forced into an embarrassing climbdown on Tuesday night over his plans to slash welfare spending, after it became apparent he was in danger of losing the vote owing to a rebellion among his own MPs.

The bill that was put to MPs for a vote was so watered down that the most controversial element – to tighten the eligibility criteria for personal independence payments (PIP) – was put on hold, pending a review into the assessment process by minister Stephen Timms that is due to report back in the autumn.

The government was forced into a U-turn after Labour MPs signalled publicly and privately that the previous concession made at the weekend to protect existing claimants from the new rules would not be enough.

While the bill passed its first parliamentary hurdle last night, with a majority of 75, 49 Labour MPs still voted against it – the largest rebellion in a prime minister’s first year in office since 47 MPs voted against Tony Blair’s Lone Parent benefit in 1997, according to Professor Phil Cowley from Queen Mary University.

It left MPs to vote on only one element of the original plan – the cut to Universal Credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

An amendment brought by Labour MP Rachael Maskell, which aimed to prevent the bill progressing to the next stage, was defeated but 44 Labour MPs voted for it.

The incident has raised questions about Sir Keir’s authority just a year after the general election delivered him the first Labour landslide victory in decades.

And on Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was “not going anywhere” after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister’s questions sparked speculation about her political future.

The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.

Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: “Labour rows over welfare reform haven’t just harmed the public’s view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.

“The public is starting to doubt Labour’s ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak’s governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn’t end up going the same way.”

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Emotional Reeves a painful watch – and a reminder of tough decisions ahead

Published

9 hours ago

July 2, 2025

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Emotional Reeves a painful watch - and a reminder of tough decisions ahead

It is hard to think of a PMQs like it – it was a painful watch.

The prime minister battled on, his tone assured, even if his actual words were not always convincing.

But it was the chancellor next to him that attracted the most attention.

Rachel Reeves looked visibly upset.

It is hard to know for sure right now what was going on behind the scenes, the reasons – predictable or otherwise – why she appeared to be emotional, but it was noticeable and it was difficult to watch.

Reeves looks visibly upset as Starmer defends welfare U-turn – politics latest

Her spokesperson says it was a personal matter that they will not be getting into.

Even Kemi Badenoch, not usually the most nimble PMQs performer, singled her out. “She looks absolutely miserable,” she said.

Anyone wondering if Kemi Badenoch can kick a dog when it’s down has their answer today.

The Tory leader asked the PM if he could guarantee his chancellor’s future: he could not. “She has delivered, and we are grateful for it,” Sir Keir said, almost sounding like he was speaking in the past tense.

It is important to say: Rachel Reeves’s face during one PMQs session is not enough to tell us everything, or even anything, we need to know.

But given the government has just faced its most bruising week yet, it was hard not to speculate. The prime minister’s spokesperson has said since PMQs that the chancellor has not offered her resignation and is not going anywhere.

But Rachel Reeves has surely seen an omen of the impossible decisions ahead.

How will she plug the estimated £5.5bn hole left by the welfare climbdown in the nation’s finances? Will she need to tweak her iron clad fiscal rules? Will she come back for more tax rises? What message does all of this send to the markets?

If a picture tells us a thousand words, Rachel Reeves’s face will surely be blazoned on the front pages tomorrow as a warning that no U-turn goes unpunished.