Key events
Labour needs to ‘pick things up’ after ‘tough’ first year in power, Sadiq Khan warns
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. Despite winning a huge majority at last year’s general election, Labour knew it had a lot of work to do to regain voters trust and show government could work for ordinary people.
The task was made more difficult as the party inherited a weak economy and crumbling public services underinvested in by previous Conservative administrations.
So far, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, has failed to win popularity with voters, according to many polls, with a seeming lack of political direction and constant moves to appease Reform voters while Labour’s base quietly slips away.
Starmer’s proposed cuts to winter fuel payments, his sluggishness over adopting a firmer stance on Israel’s war on Gaza and his controversial welfare reforms were out of line with much of the public’s attitudes.
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, told an audience at the Edinburgh festival fringe last night that Labour needs to “really pick things up” after a “tough” first year in government.
Khan, who has been critical over the government before, notably over disability benefit cuts and ministers’ plans for a third runway at Heathrow, said there was a feeling that people “lent” Labout their vote last summer (in a bid to get the Conservatives out).
He said:
Those people that say it has been a great first year … I think they are letting the party down.
It hasn’t been a great first year. There have been great things that have happened in this first year, around the rights for renters, around the rights for workers, around energy security, and I could go on. But as first years go, it has not been a great first year.
Khan said Labour could still turn around as it has another four years and are equipped with a “great team” in No 10 led by Starmer, who he insisted he was not being critical of, although he conceded that the prime minister and those around him could be performing better.
Khan – who is a Liverpool FC supporter – said if Labour was in a football match, they would be “two-nil down”.
But continuing his analogy, he said that only 15 or 20 minutes of the match had gone, with minutes still to play and to “win this game”.
He explained:
It is really important now we really pick things up because I think we are two-nil down.
But the great news is we have turned it round before, we have won games before where we’re two nil down, we can do it again.
After over a decade out of power at Westminster, Khan also said that the party had “lost the memory of running things”.
“It has taken some time for the Labour party, the Labour government, to understand how the machinery of government works,” he said.