Starmer pleads for space to lead Labour in ‘fight of our lives’ against Reform

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.

He said there was “a lot of hard work to do” for his administration to deliver the change promised by Labour’s landslide win last year.

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.

Trouble

Asked how much trouble he was in, Sir Keir told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “We’ve got a lot of hard work to do.”

He highlighted achievements including increasing NHS appointments and rolling out an expansion of childcare.

“There’s a lot we have achieved but we’ve got to do more,” he said.

“We inherited a complete mess, a broken economy, a broken public services.

“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.

Pressure

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.”

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.”