‘Disillusioned’ voters still not in love with Labour, warns Kinnock
VOTERS are not in love with the Labour Party, Lord Kinnock has said, sparking claims that the next general election could be a repeat of 1992.
The former Labour leader said it is ‘fair’ to say the public is not convinced by his party, and suggested it was not guaranteed to win a majority.
Lord Kinnock told the BBC Radio 4’s The Week In Westminster yesterday: ‘People will say, “Let’s get the bloody Tories out”, but they won’t say, “Hurrah, hurrah, marvellous, freedom, liberation is with us because of Keir Starmer”. They are entirely different departments of human sentiment.’
Asked if the country was ‘deeply disillusioned with the Tories’ but ‘not yet fully convinced or in love with the Labour pitch’, Lord Kinnock replied: ‘I think that’s fair. And I think that it’s pretty natural after 14 years of continuous Conservative-led and Conservative governments. Expressing enthusiasm is different from expressing desperation.’
Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Lord Kinnock is just saying what the public know about Sir Keir Starmer.
There is no love for Starmer because no one can trust a word he says. Starmer pretends to be something and then tacks and turns and takes the British people for fools.’
A Tory insider added: ‘No one election is the same as another but it’s clear nothing is in the bag for Labour.’
Lord Kinnock was Labour leader in the run-up to the 1992 general election, when his party was ahead in the polls and expected to win, only to be beaten by Sir John Major.
He famously appeared at a Labour rally in Sheffield days before the election, shouting: ‘We’re all right!’
Yesterday he declined to say whether the run-up to the next general election resembled 1992 or 1997, when Tony Blair won by a landslide, saying no two elections were the same.
He added: ‘I don’t think we’ll lose. In fact, I think I can say with some certainty we’re not going to lose.
‘When it comes to trying to guess the possibility of majorities – large, medium, small – I simply won’t engage in that.’
Last week, Labour was 30 points ahead of the Tories in a YouGov poll, the biggest lead since Liz Truss’s premiership. It came after Rishi Sunak’s party lost 470 council seats and its West Midlands mayor.
The Tories seized on analysis which used the local elections to predict national vote share in a general election, to warn the country could be on course for a hung Parliament.
Sir Keir’s team is keen to guard against complacency. Yesterday, Labour chairman Anneliese Dodds told The Telegraph: ‘We can be very good at losing elections people thought we would win. Think of 1992.’
Last week, Sir Keir came under fire from his MPs after accepting Tory MP Natalie Elphicke into the party.
A Tory source said: ‘It’s not a good sign if Keir is already sidelining his own MPs and not listening to his MPs.’
‘It’s clear nothing is in the bag for Keir’