Keir Starmer will tell the Shadow Cabinet this week
that after great local election
results, there’s “still more work to be done” and
now is the time “to show that Labour’s serious plans
offer not just reassurance, but the hope the country needs,
alongside the scale of change Britain needs.”
“The hardest part lies ahead,” he will say.
Labour is now the largest party in local government having
secured its best result since 1997, gaining 500 councillors and
22 councils. More importantly the local elections showed Labour
performing most strongly in the areas we need to win to ensure we
come out of the next general election with a majority Labour
government.
The Labour leader will say:
“The local elections showed that the country was desperate for
change. The fact that Labour won in all parts of the country was
a sign of the strides we have made. People who turned away from
us during the Corbyn years and the Brexit years are coming
back. But there is understandably a lot of
scepticism about politics out there and now we need to
go from reassurance to hope. We need to show that we will be
a big reforming government bringing hope of a better life
for working people.”
He will say:
“We had a mountain to climb after our big defeat in 2019. Thanks
to your hard work we have changed the Labour Party, got back in
touch with voters and started to earn back voters’ trust. Last
week’s results only strengthen my determination to show that our
policy plans offer an exciting prospectus for change.”
Starmer believes that the Tories have made a big strategic
blunder in believing that ‘woke’ issues are more salient to
voters than the cost of living and the NHS. And he will say:
“Labour’s plan to rebuild the NHS will be at the heart of our
offer to the British people. The Tories are doing too little, too
late to repair the damage they have done to the NHS.
“The NHS trumps ‘woke’ every day of the week.”
Starmer will re-emphasise to the shadow
cabinet the three-part strategy for the Parliament and
say that ‘the strategy is on track’:
- Change the party after the Corbyn years rooting out
antisemitism
- Show that the Tories are unfit to govern
- Put forward a positive policy programme to get Britain
back on its feet
He believes good progress has been made on the first two,
though that work never stops, and we are progressing
the third at pace, but there is lots still to
do.
Starmer sees Labour’s 5 missions for a better
Britain as a way of showing that Labour:
- Has serious plans for the future, and an antidote to
short-term sticking plaster politics
- Is addressing the key concerns voters have for better public
services and higher living standards
- Is fighting for working people in sharp contrast to an out of
touch PM and an out of touch government
In the coming weeks Labour will:
- Launch a health mission to show how we will make the NHS
fit for the future
- Launch an opportunity mission showing how education reform
can break down the barriers to opportunity
- Launch more details of our clean power mission – showing how
it will create jobs and opportunities in communities across the
whole country
In addition:
- Labour will expand on its compelling plans for Scotland that
build on Labour’s growing support
- Deepen our economic growth plans with interventions from both
and Keir
Taken together Labour’s plans will come together for party
conference to show Labour can offer real hope and change and give
Britain its future back.
