‘Labour is able to win next election’

POLITICS: Sir Keir Starmer has recognised the “massive task” winning the next General Election would be for Labour as he urged the people of Doncaster to tell him where his party went wrong.

Speaking in a virtual event yesterday, Sir Keir said he knew the challenge ahead of him but said he did think it was “doable”.

SIR KEIR Starmer has recognised the “massive task” winning the next General Election would be for Labour as he urged the people of Doncaster to tell him where his party went wrong.

Speaking in a virtual event yesterday, Sir Keir said he knew the challenge ahead of him but said he did think it was “doable” for him to reach Number 10 Downing Street in 2024.

He said “there’s no pretending otherwise” that it will not be difficult, and added: “But I don’t think it’s possible if I don’t do what I’m doing now, which is to listen to people first and get that firsthand experience of what people want to tell me about what needs to change in the Labour Party.”

He said: “I‘m deeply conscious that as the incoming leader of the Labour Party, I am the leader of a party that’s not just lost an election badly in December, but the last four elections in a row.”

Doncaster was one of the areas where Labour lost to the Tories in the 2019 election as the so-called ‘‘red wall’’ crumbled. Members of the public submitted questions ranging from coronavirus to the European Union and Brexit, as well as on local representation.

Referencing the Brexit debate, something which he was told came up repeatedly on the doorsteps in Doncaster, Sir Keir said it had been about people not feeling like they could influence the decisions made about then.

“But it’s much, much deeper than that,” he said. “This sense that people say ‘decisions about me should be made closer to me and in a way that I can influence them’. And I just don’t think that’s happening. So actually, I’m a big advocate of moving power and decision-making actually out of Westminster altogether.

“So where we can, we should be putting decisions closer to people, decisions about Doncaster should be taken in Doncaster.”

Sir Keir was asked by former police officer Andrew Thompsett, a lifelong Conservative who once voted for Labour, how he had pushed for more support for the self-employed during the coronavirus crisis. He said: “I think there’s a bit of a sense that the self employed always sort of seemed to come as a bit of an afterthought in all of this. And so we’ll raise that again with him, Andrew and see whether we can get some movement on it.”

He also hit out at the response to the flooding in Doncaster last year.

Speaking to journalists after the event, he said: “We are still in the place of reacting to floods every time they happen rather than now accepting that we’re in a stage where flooding is likely and it should be properly risk assessed as an ongoing strategy going forward.”

He added: “It’s intolerable for people to be left, essentially in a position where they can’t be insured and we know there is the risk of flooding in the future. So we need to find a solution.”

Where we can, we should be putting decisions closer to people, Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer.