Labour are “2-0 down 20 minutes into a football game” and the budget is the next “pivotal” moment for the party’s survival, Sadiq Khan has warned.
The Mayor of London told a fringe event at the Labour Party conference that he has faith his “friend” Sir Keir Starmer can turn around his plummeting approval ratings.
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But summing up the mood of many of his colleagues gathered in Liverpool, he said that depends on “accelerating delivery and telling a better story”.
“If this is a game of football, what I’d say is it’s a 90-minute game, we’ve played almost 20 minutes and we are 2-0 down. We have got to use the rest of the time in this game to turn it around. I think it’s possible.”
Asked what the story should be, Sir Sadiq said: “Change. That was the word in the manifesto and not enough people have seen change, we either are the disrupters or we will be disrupted.”
He added that Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget next month is “really really important”.
“There needs to be a significant runway for it to bear fruit,” he said. “If we do one before the general election with big giveaways, people will see right through it.
“The budget is the most pivotal event since the general election.”
Labour’s annual party conference – the second since Sir Keir took office – has been overshadowed by multiple polls predicting Reform UK will win the next election.
There has been mounting speculation Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham could mount a leadership challenge, following his high-profile criticism, though today he insisted Sir Keir is the right person to lead the party.
Several fringe events have heard from MPs and pollsters about what Labour can do to fight back against Nigel Farage before it is too late.
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‘Some good news for Starmer’
Luke Tryl, the director of More in Common, said there is some “good news” for the prime minister, as research from polling and focus groups show “people do think that the ship can be turned around, they haven’t switched off the way they did at the end of the Sunak government”.
However, Labour faces a challenge as it is losing voters to the right and the left. While focusing on immigration is important, there is also a broad coalition of the public that want to see improvements on the cost of living and NHS, Mr Tryl said.
The pollster was speaking at a fringe event about how Labour can rebuild its electoral coalition, alongside a number of backbench MPs.
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Starmer given May deadline
Richard Burgon, the left-wing Corybnite who has long been a Starmer critic, gave him a stay of execution until May, when there will be local elections in many parts of England as well as devolved elections in Scotland and Wales.
“There’s a political inevitability if next May, if the results are as the opinion polls say they will be, it’s inevitable that Keir Starmer will no longer be prime minister,” Mr Burgon said. He said Sir Keir had lost “a lot of good will” over unpopular decisions like the cut to winter fuel which made it look like “we are too close to the rich and powerful whilst hurting people”.
He added that the government isn’t talking enough about the “great things” it is doing, like bolstering workers rights, as it is “almost like we are embarrassed to have done Labour things because we want to talk about Reformy things”.
The other backbenchers dismissed the idea of a leadership challenge – but they all had messages for the prime minister.
Former minister Anneliese Dodds said the public need to see “more of the real Keir”, while Jonathan Hinder, co-founder of the Blue Labour caucus, said the party needed to talk about “the big ideas and the direction we want to take the country in”.
Alistair Strathern, the MP for Hitchin, got a round of applause from members in the packed room when he said: “We have an electorate who are deeply weary of chaos and political parties chopping and changing all the time, we will obviously be in a better position if Keir Starmer is leading us into the next election with a strong vision, clear values and tangible change.”
PM to address conference tomorrow
Sir Keir will address the conference tomorrow when all eyes will be on whether his speech signals a change in direction. Many MPs want to see the two-child benefit cap scrapped but it is not clear if there will be a policy announcement.
The prime minister has spent the past few days launching a fightback against Reform by framing the next election as one between “division and hate” and “progressive patriotic renewal”.
He drew clear dividing lines with Mr Farage this week, as he branded his plan to scrap Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) for legal migrants as “racist and immoral”.
Labour said that instead of scrapping it, they will reform the system by requiring migrants to prove they are contributing to society to earn the right to remain.
However, already, some politicians have questioned the prime minister’s judgement in using that language.
Sir Sadiq said while Nigel Farage’s ILR policy was “the most unBritish thing imaginable” it is “really important to have this debate [about immigration] without necessarily name-calling”.
“I don’t call followers of Reform racist, I don’t call Nigel Farage racist,” he said.
