Pressure mounts on Starmer as Labour trail the Tories

Starmer says the party has a "mountain to climb" to catch Boris Johnson's Conservatives as cracks appear in Labour ranks.

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New polling data published in The Evening Standard gives the Conservatives a four-point lead over Labour and shows Britons prefer Prime Minister Boris Johnson to see out Covid-19 and lead the nation in its economic recovery over opposition leader Keir Starmer.

The Ipsos MORI poll of 1,056 respondents placed support for Labour at 38 per cent, down three-points from the pollster's last poll published in December. It also indicated that the Tories, now on their sixth consecutive lead in the opinion polls, have widened the gap over Starmer's party. The Conservatives’ polled vote share was up one-point on 42 per cent.

On his visit to the Essex towns of Basildon and Thurrock, seats previously held by Tony Blair's Labour Party, Starmer confessed that his party still has "a mountain to climb". However, the MP for Holborn and St Pancras stressed that his stint as Labour leader, which has seen Labour go from their worst election defeat since 1935 to leading the Tories in less than a year, as "a step in the right direction". But despite this remarkable recovery as Labour leader, Starmer's last week was among his most challenging. 

A leaked memo on Labour's use of the Union flag and a resurfaced video from 2005 of the then human rights lawyer saying that he previously proposed "the abolition of the monarchy" automatically put Starmer on the back foot. 

Then, in their weekly jostle at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, the opposition leader made an uncharacteristic blunder.

Johnson said "if we had listened to [Starmer] we would still be at the starting blocks", and added that the Labour leader stated he "wanted [the UK] to stay in the European Medicines Agency" four times from the dispatch box. Starmer, who has since claimed he "misheard" Johnson, initially denied this and replied that "the prime minister knows I've never said that from this dispatch box or anywhere else, but the truth escapes him."

But Hansard records show that in January 2017 Starmer, then as shadow Brexit secretary, asked his Conservative counterpart "why would we want to be outside of the European Medicines Agency?" 

It has also been reported that some Labour MPs are beginning to become disgruntled with Starmer's cautious approach to politics. 

In The Sunday Times, one unnamed Labour MP said: "there's something missing" and whilst they accepted Labour is "not in the relegation anymore" the party was "not ahead of the Tories in the polls and given the mess they're in, we ought to be. Even Ed Miliband was constantly eight or nine points ahead of David Cameron - and look where that ended up."

The Corbynista, Richard Burgon, has been even more direct in his criticisms against Starmer. Burgon revealed "many feel our leadership has taken the fight to its own members more than it has to a Tory government responsible for one of the worst coronavirus death rates in the world."

Burgon's colleagues in Labour's Socialist Campaign Group of MPs and a group of trade unionists have also called on Starmer to hold an emergency party conference in a bid to address the party's "anger and disillusionment". 

Britain's political parties are still set to face-off in a series of delayed local and devolved elections in May. While Labour are expected to perform well in both the London mayoral election and in the capital's assembly contests, the polls in the UK's Celtic corners look far more challenging.

In Scotland, the SNP currently register unassailable leads in the opinion polls. Labour, who represented a majority of Scottish seats in Westminster in 2010, are expected to finish in third-place behind Douglas Ross' Conservative and Unionist Party.

In Wales, a nation that has voted Labour in every general and devolved election since 1918, a recent YouGov poll has suggested Starmer's party is expected to lead a minority government, with 26 out of 60 seats in the Senedd. 

One party official explained to The Huffington Post that in Brexit-backing north Wales the Labour Party, as they were in December 2019, are under pressure from the Tories. But in south Wales, especially in the valleys, they are being outflanked by Plaid Cymru.

Without a resurgence in Scotland or the re-establishment of electoral dominance in Wales, Labour would need to make significant gains in “middle England” to forge a path to power in 2024.

Starmer will hope that his attempts to make Labour “unashamedly pro-business” will connect him with “Mondeo man” and “Worcester woman”, both of whom helped Labour’s last and longest-serving prime minister, Tony Blair, win three landslide majorities in 1997, 2001 and 2005. 

Labour’s economic pledges include opposition to rises in corporation and council tax during the pandemic. But Starmer also called on the government to “extend the business rate cuts” and “to do some more work on VAT to make sure these businesses that have got this far can bridge out the other end.”

This article is published as part of The Commons Man series, written by Pi Media columnist Jack Walters.