Labour can’t ‘turn taps on’ for struggling councils, Sir Keir Starmer warns at local election launch
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.”
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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
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.
Sir Keir 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.
Read more:
Labour will not bail out bankrupt councils, Reeves says
Why are councils going bankrupt?
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”.
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The return on Donald Trump to the G7 was always going to be unpredictable. That it is happening against the backdrop of an escalating conflict in the Middle East makes it even more so.
Expectations had already been low, with the Canadian hosts cautioning against the normal joint communique at the end of the summit, mindful that this group of leaders would struggle to find consensus.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney carefully laid down an agenda that was uncontroversial in a bid to avoid any blow-ups between President Trump and allies, who of late have been divided like never before – be it over tariffs and trade, Russia and Ukraine, or, more recently Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
But discussions around critical minerals and global supply chains will undoubtedly drop down the agenda as leaders convene at a precarious moment. Keir Starmer, on his way over to Canada for a bi-lateral meeting in Ottawa with PM Carney before travelling onto the G7 summit in Kananaskis, underscored the gravity of the situation as he again spoke of de-escalation, while also confirmed that the UK was deploying more British fighter jets to the region amid threats from Tehran that it will attack UK bases if London helps defend Israel against airstrikes.
Canadian PM Mark Carney is greeted by President Donald Trump at the White House in May. Pic: AP
Really this is a G7 agenda scrambled as world leaders scramble to de-escalate the worst fighting between Tel Aviv and Tehran in decades. President Trump has for months been urging Israel not to strike Iran as he worked towards a diplomatic deal to halt uranium enrichment. Further talks had been due on Sunday – but are now not expected to go ahead.
All eyes will be on Trump in the coming days, to see if the US – Israel’s closest ally – will call on Israel to rein in its assault. The US has so far not participated in any joint attacks with Tel Aviv, but is moving warships and other military assets to the Middle East.
Sir Keir, who has managed to strike the first trade deal with Trump, will want to leverage his “good relationship” with the US leader at the G7 to press for de-escalation in the Middle East, while he also hopes to use the summit to further discuss the further the interests of Ukraine with Trump and raise again the prospects of Russian sanctions.
“We’ve got President Zelenskyy coming so that provides a good opportunity for us to discuss again as a group,” the PM told me on the flight over to Canada. “My long-standing view is, we need to get Russia to the table for an unconditional ceasefire. That’s not been really straightforward. But we do need to be clear about what we need to get to the table and that if that doesn’t happen, sanctions will undoubtedly be part of the discussion at the G7.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (R) is greeted by Mark Carney as he arrives in Ottawa ahead of the G7
But that the leaders are not planning for a joint communique – a document outlining what the leaders have agreed – tells you a lot. When they last gathered with Trump in Canada for the G7 back in 2018, the US president rather spectacularly fell out with Justin Trudeau when the former Canadian president threatened to retaliate against US tariffs and refused to sign the G7 agreement.
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Since then, Trump has spoken of his desire to turn Canada into the 51st state of the US, a suggestion that helped catapult the Liberal Party beyond their Conservative rivals and back into power in the recent Canadian elections, as Mark Carney stood on a ticket of confronting Trump’s aggression.
With so much disagreement between the US and allies, it is hard to see where progress might be made over the next couple of days. But what these leaders will agree on is the need to take down the temperature in the Middle East and for all the unpredictability around these relationships, what is certain is a sense of urgency around Iran and Israel that could find these increasingly disparate allies on common ground.
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