Sir Keir Starmer needs to win big at the local elections to keep up Labour’s momentum

Published

2 years ago

March 31, 2023

admin

Politicians are often criticised for empty rhetoric, but Sir Keir Starmer was right when he told activists in Swindon on Thursday, “these [local] elections matter”.

That’s because the May poll will be both the first big ballot box test for Rishi Sunak, and will give a sense of whether the momentum Sir Keir is showing in national polling translates into actual votes.

Politics live: Starmer brands Sunak ‘Mr 1%’ at local election launch

There’s a lot at stake for both sides. As Sir Keir Starmer says on a walkabout in Swindon: “I’m measuring this on the road to the next general election and I want to see the Labour Party making real progress.”

And it is a key staging post for Starmer’s Labour: the party will need to show it is the main beneficiary of lost Tory votes and that means big wins.

If the Conservatives lose 500 of the more than 3,300 seats they are defending across England to Labour, it would be the first time in over two decades that the Tories were not the biggest local party in England – a huge symbolic blow.

But Labour needs to do a lot more than that to prove they are on course for a general election victory.

A net gain of 700 seats would mean Starmer’s Labour is still underperforming in current polling. That sort of win would equate to a national equivalent vote share of around 37%.

To put that into context, in the 1995 locals ahead of the 1997 Labour landslide, Tony Blair achieved 47%.

Arguably, a net gain of more than a thousand seats in these elections would be significant for Labour – a big success.

Sir Keir refuses to put a number on what success would look like, but does say he “wants to get as many of those 1,000 seats as [he] can”, adding: “These local elections are very, very important to us.”

And part of that pathway for Sir Keir is trying to prove to the public that Labour has changed under his leadership.

‘I’m prepared to be ruthless’

His clearest signal of this, beyond the patriotic speeches in front of Union Jacks, was Labour’s decision last week to bar Jeremy Corbyn standing as an MP in the next general election.

Three years ago, Sir Keir described Mr Corbyn as a “friend” – now he’s expelled him as an MP.

“I’m prepared to be ruthless to ensure we have a Labour government,” he tells me, unapologetic over a decision which Mr Corbyn has described as a “shameful attack on democracy”.

“There’s one person that’s responsible for the fact that Jeremy Corbyn will not be a candidate at the next general election and that’s Jeremy Corbyn,” said Sir Keir.

“I have been ruthless in the change in the Labour Party. I do not apologise for that because what matters most to me is that the change that millions of people desperately need across our country comes about.”

But like voters I’ve spoken to in the past few weeks in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, Pendle in Lancashire and now Swindon, the jury is still out on Sir Keir, with voters unsure about what he stands for.

Labour may be way out ahead of the Conservatives in the polls, propelled by the own goals of the Johnson and Truss administrations, but what the party lacks is something crucial which Tony Blair had – a sense of excitement and a leader with huge personal appeal.

When I put that to Sir Keir, his only answer is that elections like these give him the opportunity to get around the country to make the case.

That Sir Keir hasn’t nailed it with voters is one of the Conservatives’ biggest hopes in turning around their fortunes in a general election.

If voters are unsure about the Labour leader, and his rival Mr Sunak can show competence and economic improvement as the country goes to the polls in a general election, might they stick with Sunak?

If that’s the Conservative hope, the reality for May’s local elections is that Labour will give the government a bloody nose.

Back at base in Downing Street there are expectations that the results will hurt.

“It’s not going to be good,” one senior figure told Sky News.

‘Big win needed’

There is some consolation that the King’s coronation on 6 May will mean the painful post-election coverage will at least be short-lived.

But even if attention quickly shifts away from the results, these local elections will set the tenor for a political year that already feels like the beginning of the long campaign to what could prove a seismic general election for the country should power pass from the Conservatives to Labour.

Labour wins in Swindon, in parts of the Tees Valley, such as Middlesbrough or in Hartlepool, will be important, as will progress in the Midlands – Dudley, Walsall – and North East Derbyshire, where councils and constituencies have been surrendered to the Tories in recent years.

Will 2024 turn out to be Labour’s 1997 of 1992, the landslide or the narrow defeat?

To keep momentum for the former, Sir Keir needs to win big in May.

World

Mile after mile of grey rubble – the view from a plane dropping aid to Gaza

Published

10 hours ago

July 29, 2025

admin

Mile after mile of grey rubble - the view from a plane dropping aid to Gaza

We are on our way to Gaza with the Jordanian military.

The aircraft is hot and noisy and as we get closer, the atmosphere gets more tense. Aircrew gesture with their hands to tell us how many minutes there are to go. Fifteen. Six. One.

The Jordanian military C-130 flies out over the sea before banking and heading inland for Gaza. The parachutes, attached to the top of each of the eight pallets, are prepared for the drop.

As land approaches, I look down. The ground is modern and built up – we’re still over southern Israel.

Then a few short minutes later, it’s clear we’ve crossed Gaza’s border.

The ground turns grey, the shapes of buildings disappear, there are no cars, no people.

You can see the outline of communities and villages that are now flattened. Mile after mile of grey rubble.

This mission by the Royal Jordanian Air Force is one of the first aid drop flights since Israel announced they could resume. It is carrying eight tonnes of food and baby formula.

Foreign nations know this is a deeply flawed way of delivering aid – road convoys are far more effective and can carry far more – but the Jordanian flight crew say the need in Gaza is so urgent, it’s simply an attempt to do something.

When the aircraft ramp opens, the aid is pushed out and it’s gone in seconds.

The parachutes seem peaceful as they open and their fall slows. But dropping food from the sky is a dangerous and undignified way to feed people.

On the ground it’s chaos.

Our colleagues in Gaza say the fighting for food has become lethal – gangs are now punching and stabbing people to reach it first. Most critically, it’s not getting to the weakest. To those who really need it.

One man becomes emotional as he describes racing to find food and leaving with nothing.

“I came only for my son,” he says. “I wouldn’t come here if it was just for me. When you have a child, they need bread.”

He’s an engineer in normal times and seems in disbelief that his life has come to this. “The aid comes from the sky and we have to run after it. I’ve never had to do this in my life.”

It is hoped Israel’s humanitarian pauses in fighting will rapidly increase food distribution by road but it’s very unclear how that is going.

Hospitals in Gaza have reported another 14 deaths from starvation in the last 24 hours, the Gaza health ministry said on Monday.

Airstrikes killed another at least 78 Palestinians across Gaza on Monday, local health officials said.

We cannot verify these numbers because Israel has not allowed international journalists access to Gaza.

And Monday’s flight came with strict media conditions.

We were told the Israeli side had warned that any shots of Gaza filmed from the air could result in these aid flights being cancelled.

But Israel’s tight grip has not stopped the images from Gaza getting out, horrifying people around the world.

The question now is what more the international community will do about it.

World

Israeli human rights organisations accuse country of genocide

Published

13 hours ago

July 28, 2025

admin

Israeli human rights organisations accuse country of genocide

Two Israeli human rights organisations have said the country is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

In reports published on Monday, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said Israel was carrying out “coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”.

The two groups are the first major voices within Israeli society to make such accusations against the state during nearly 22 months of war against Hamas.

Israel has vehemently denied claims of genocide. David Mencer, a spokesperson for the government, called the allegation by the rights groups “baseless”.

He said: “There is no intent, (which is) key for the charge of genocide… it simply doesn’t make sense for a country to send in 1.9 million tonnes of aid, most of that being food, if there is an intent of genocide.”

B’Tselem director Yuli Novak called for urgent action, saying: “What we see is a clear, intentional attack on civilians in order to destroy a group.”

The organisation’s report “is one we never imagined we would have to write,” Ms Novak said. “The people of Gaza have been displaced, bombed, and starved, left completely stripped of their humanity and rights.”

PHR said Israel’s military campaign shows evidence of a “deliberate and systemic dismantling of Gaza’s health and life-sustaining systems”.

Both organisations said Israel’s Western allies were enabling the genocidal campaign, and shared responsibility for suffering in Gaza.

“It couldn’t happen without the support of the Western world,” Ms Novak said. “Any leader that is not doing whatever they can to stop it is part of this horror.”

Hamas said the reports by the two groups were a “clear and unambiguous testimony from within Israeli society itself regarding the grave crimes perpetrated by the occupation regime against our people”.

Dire humanitarian conditions

Since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, nearly 60,000 people – mostly civilians – have been killed, according to Gaza health officials.

Much of the infrastructure has been destroyed, and nearly the whole population of more than two million has been displaced.

An increasing number of people in Gaza are also dying from starvation and malnutrition, according to Gaza health authorities.

On Monday, the Gaza health ministry reported that at least 14 people had died from starvation and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of hunger-related deaths during the war to 147.

Among the victims were 88 children, with most of the deaths occurring in recent weeks.

UN agencies say the territory is running out of food for its people and accuse Israel of not allowing enough aid deliveries to the enclave. Israel denies those claims.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said “there is no starvation in Gaza” and vowed to fight on against Hamas.

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that many in Gaza are facing starvation and implied that Israel could take further steps to improve humanitarian access.

Israel has repeatedly said its actions in Gaza are in self-defence, placing full responsibility for civilian casualties on Hamas. It cites the militant group’s refusal to release hostages, surrender, or stop operating within civilian areas – allegations that Hamas denies.

World

Why are airdrops on Gaza so dangerous?

Published

22 hours ago

July 28, 2025

admin

The United Nations has condemned airdrops on Gaza, warning they risk killing the starving Palestinians they are intended to help.

Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel parachuted aid packages into the territory for the first time in months at the weekend amid claims a third of the population has not eaten for days.

But Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general for the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), has said they “will not reverse the deepening starvation” and often do more harm than good.

‘Make or break’ as starvation looms; Middle East latest

“They are expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving civilians,” he wrote in a statement on X.

What is an airdrop – and why are they dangerous?

There are several ways humanitarian agencies and international allies can deliver aid to regions in need – by land, by sea, or by air.

While parachuting in supply packages from planes may look impressive, airdrops are “fraught with problems”, Sky correspondent in Jordan Sally Lockwood says, and often used as a “desperate last resort”.

“Foreign nations know airdrops are a deeply flawed way of delivering aid,” she says.

“Palestinian sources tell us the aid that’s been dropped so far is not reaching the most vulnerable. They are an attempt to get something to a few – often viewed as a desperate last resort. Gaza is at that point.”

Military analyst Sean Bell says that delivering aid by air is ideally done when planes can land on a runway – but Gaza’s only landing strip in Rafah was shut down in 2021.

The alternative is “very dangerous”, he warns. “Aircraft flying relatively low and slow over a warzone isn’t very clever. When these parcels hit the ground, there’s a significant danger of them hitting people.”

Crucially, they can only deliver a fraction of what lorries can.

“The really big issue is aircraft can only deliver one truckload of aid. Gaza needs 500 truckloads a day, so it’s 0.2% of the daily need,” Bell adds.

They also risk falling into the wrong hands and ending up on the black market.

“Some of it has been looted by gangs and is on the black market already,” Lockwood says.

Why are they happening now?

Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza at the beginning of March, reopening some aid centres in May, but with restrictions they said were designed to stop goods being stolen by Hamas militants.

Israeli authorities control the only three border crossings to the strip: Kerem Shalom in the south, Crossing 147 in the centre, and Erez to the north.

Since the current conflict with Hamas began in October 2023, humanitarian agencies and world leaders have repeatedly accused Israel of not allowing enough deliveries through.

Mr Lazzarini says the UN has “the equivalent of 6,000 trucks” in neighbouring Jordan and Egypt “waiting for the green light to get into Gaza”.

Israel says it has commissioned a “one-week scale-up of aid”, having conducted its own airdrops on Saturday.

In a statement over the weekend, the Israeli Defence Forces said it will work with the UN and other aid organisations to ensure aid is delivered but no more details were given.

Meanwhile on Sunday, it began daily 10-hour pauses in fighting in three areas of Gaza to address the deteriorating humanitarian situation.

According to the Hamas-run health ministry, 133 Palestinians had died of malnutrition by then, including 87 children.

Doctors Without Borders warned on Friday that 25% of young children and pregnant women in Gaza are malnourished.

Israel says there is no famine in Gaza.

What are in the airdrops and who is behind them?

Air packages are largely being delivered by C-130 planes. Jordan is reported to be using 10 and the UAE eight.

They can carry eight pallets of goods each, weighing around eight tonnes in total, according to Lockwood, who is on the runway at Jordan’s King Abdullah II airbase.

There are no medical supplies in the packages, she says, only dried food, rice, flour, and baby formula.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK will help with airdrops – but no British aircraft have been seen in Jordan so far.

He will discuss the matter with US President Donald Trump during talks in Scotland on Monday.

The RAF delivered 110 tonnes of aid across 10 drops last year as part of a Jordanian-led international coalition – but it is not clear what level of support will be offered this time.