Starmer launches Labour local election campaign and defends ‘difficult decisions’ over dropped pledges– as it happened

Starmer is summing up the Labour offer.

This Labour party with Rachel Reeves as chancellor will value every pound as if it’s yours – because at the end of the day, it is.

He lists the five Labour missions.

One, higher growth, with a reform planning system, no longer blocking the homes, the infrastructure, the investment that the country needs.

Two, safer streets, with 13,000 Extra neighbourhood police officers cracking down on the antisocial behaviour which blights so many of our town centres.

Three, cheaper bills with GB Energy, a new publicly owned company harnessing clean British power, not foreign oil and gas.

Four, more opportunities for your children, more mental health support in our schools, expert teachers in every classroom, new technical excellence colleges, training our kids in the skills they need, our businesses want.

And, five, our NHS back on its feet, 2 million extra appointments every year, a plan to cut the waiting list, start clearing the backlog, rescue NHS dentists and end the 8am scramble at your GP surgery.

Starmer says Labour offers economic stability. And he claims the Tories are committed to “the madness of unfunded tax cuts”.

Here’s what voting Labour means this year. A plan that starts, as it must – with economic stability. Look at the Tories now, once again in desperation, committing to the madness of unfunded tax cuts. £46 billon to abolish national insurance, with no way of funding it other than risky borrowing or cutting your pension and our NHS.

It’s like they think Liz Truss never happened. And maybe for their bills, for their mortgage, for their cost of living – it didn’t. But beyond the walls of Westminster, working people have paid an enormous price.

Starmer says Labour would devolve power to local communities.

Britain has an economy that hoards potential and a politics that hoards power. And it’s no coincidence or accident that this leaves us with more regional inequality than anywhere else in Europe.

But he says there are no “easy answers” to providing the route to recovery.

If we want to change our economy, we must also change our politics and put an end to politics that is done to communities, not with them. No more political hero complexes, no more fantasies, no more easy answers that require nobody – politicians or people – to lift a finger. The Tory era of politics as performance art is coming to an end. But to get Britain out of this hole, we all need to roll up our sleeves, because national renewal is a partnership.

Starmer describes the choice at the local elections:

Stability with Labour or chaos with the Tories, unity or division, renewal or decline, a changed Labour party ready to serve the interests of working people or a Conservative party [that only serves itself].

Starmer says Dudley is where Boris Johnson gave a speech setting out his levelling up plans. And he accuses Johnson of betraying the hopes he raised.

People say to me the worst thing you can do in politics is prey on peoples’ fear. Yet in some ways, preying on their hopes is just as bad. That’s what the Tories did with levelling up.

Starmer says he can understand why people in a town like Dudley wanted to believe in levelling up.

We in the Labour party understand what towns and cities have been through over the decades. It’s our history, our communities, and in many cases, the story which has shaped our families.

The ‘chest-out’ pride that grows when you are certain that your contribution is respected is still there. But over the years it’s become a little less sure of the ground beneath its feet, in need of a stronger foundation, and a government willing to see communities like this, not as a charity case or a political client but as a source of growth and dynamism ready to be unlocked …

My dad was a toolmaker and he always felt, particularly when this was playing out during the 1980s, that he was looked down upon and disrespected in certain circles. Equally, my sister is a care worker, so I will never accept that it’s only the work of the past which deserves our pride and respect. The working people of this country: the carers, the couriers, the drivers, the teachers, the warehouse workers, nurses and supermarket staff, my Labour party stands for them.

Keir Starmer is speaking now.

He thanks Angela Rayner for her introduction, and jokes that anyone going for a drink with her should avoid her favourite drink, Venom (a near-lethal cocktail).

The launch is in Dudley, and Starmer says Labour is campaigning to win here.

He says he had hoped to be launching a general election campaign.

I was hoping we’d be launching a different election campaign here today. But unfortunately the prime minister has bottled it.

He wants one last, drawn out summer, with his beloved helicopter. And so, we’re going to have to use these local elections to send him another message and show his party – once again - that their time is up. The dithering must stop, the date must be set, because Britain wants change, and it’s time for change with Labour.

Rayner also describes Rishi Sunak as like someone who promises to get the first round in when you are going for a night out, and then never delivers.

She says we could be months away from the reset of a nation.

It is time for change, she says. She goes on:

We used to say the Labour party is a moral crusade or is nothing. Well, I’m telling you now that my moral crusade is to fight for working people who built this land so that they will benefit again from the growth that they create.

Rayner ends by introducing Keir Starmer, saying he is someone who “always gets his round in”.

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has described the Tory levelling up agenda as like a burnt-out car. The Mirror’s Lizzy Buchan has posted this from the launch, where Rayner is speaking.

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has said she will not publish the tax advice that she has received relating to the sale of a house she sold before she became an MP.

Speaking on the Today programme, she said she would only publish information of that kind if the Tory MPs who have criticsed her over the sale agree to publish their own tax details going back more than a decade. There is no indication any of them will.

Rayner has repeatedly said that she did nothing wrong, and that she paid all the tax she owed. But Tory MPs have suggested, on the basis of information published in a new biography of Rayner by Lord Ashcroft, the former Conservative deputy chair, that rules were broken, and yesterday Greater Manchester police said it was reviewing its decision not to investigate some of these allegations.

Rayner says she has had tax advice saying she did not owe capital gains tax on the sale, as some Tories have alleged. But, in an interview on the Today programme, asked why she would not publish it, she replied:

Because that’s my personal tax advice. But I’m happy to comply with the necessary authorities that want to see that.

She said she would hand over the information to the police and HM Revenue and Customs,adding: “But I’m not going to put out all of my personal details for the last 15 years about my family”.

Rayner said that if James Daly, the Tory deputy chair who reported her to Greater Manchester police, Rishi Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt published their tax details for the last 15 years, she would do the same. She added:

If you show me yours, then I’ll show you mine.

Official figures have confirmed that the UK economy went into recession at the end of last year, after the latest estimate found it contracted in the last two quarters of 2023, Phillip Inman reports.

Good morning. Keir Starmer is launching Labour’s local elections campaign this morning, and to mark the event he has discovered his inner Boris Johnson. He has written a joint article with Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, praising the ambition behind levelling up, Johnson’s flagship domestic policy priority.

This is not new territory for Starmer. Much of his leadership has been about trying to win back the “red wall” voters who deserted Labour for the Tories in 2019 and it’s why he has told them he wants to “make Brexit work”, not rejoin the single market. Like Johnson, Starmer has criticised what is said to be the new Labour economic model, one over-reliant on financial services in the City of London to generate revenue to subsidise the rest of the UK.

But there is a new twist in the article today; Starmer is blaming Rishi Sunak for blocking levelling up. (Demonising Sunak for thwarting Johnson, you could say he’s discovered his inner Nadine Dorries too.)

In their article Starmer and Rayner write:

Where you are born often dictates where you end up. That people from Blackpool have a life expectancy of ten years fewer than those in Westminster is a travesty. Instead of pitting areas against one another and relying on the square mile of the City of London to keep the UK economy afloat, we’ll tackle Britain’s regional divide and match the ambition people have for their community. It will be at the heart of our mission-led government.

It’s understandable that working people might have become disillusioned or cynical, because one of the biggest tragedies of the past 14 years is the sense that things can’t change. But they can and they will.

The Tories started to understand this with the levelling-up white paper. Much of the analysis in it was good. And there were parts that talked a good game about how Britain needed to build up all parts of the country.

But the policy was killed at birth by the then chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who refused to back it; the chaos and corruption of the Tory government under Johnson, and a failure to give regions the levers to make it happen. The “cap in hand” approach left places patronised, not empowered. A few million pounds for local projects was not part of a co-ordinated strategy but part of a short-term giveaway — and local people have seen through it.

Labour was not quite so complimentary about the levelling up white paper when it was published.

As well as being deputy leader, Rayner is shadow levelling up secretary and she will be in charge of this portfolio in a Labour government. She wants to find another name for levelling up (the concept, but also by extension the department). It has been reported that “powering up” is one option, although you would assume they would be able to come up with something better.

In their article Starmer and Rayner argue that Labour’s plans to devolve more powers to metro mayors and local authorities will go a long way to delivering levelling up. They say:

Whitehall under the Tories has become too passive and overly centralised. We will turn that on its head, delivering a far more active central government willing to give local leaders the levers needed to turbocharge their areas. We will change the relationship. Partnership in pursuit of common national missions, not buck-passing and division.

Our Take Back Control Act will entrust power to local leaders, who know their area best and have skin in the game. We will widen English devolution so that every community is taking advantage of the opportunities it brings. We will deepen devolution so combined authorities have a path to gaining powers over transport, skills, housing and planning, employment support, energy and can get a long-term integrated funding settlement in return for exemplary frameworks for managing public money. This will enable local leaders to develop powerful local growth plans that attract specialist industries and enhance their local strengths.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Keir Starmer speaks at the launch of Labour’s local elections campaign in the West Midlands. Angela Rayner, the deputy leader, and Richard Parker, the party’s candidate for West Midlands mayor, are also there.

11.30am: The Reform UK MP Lee Anderson holds a press conference in Blackpool to unveil the party’s candidate in the forthcoming byelection.

12pm: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions at Holyrood.

Also, in the Scottish parliament, an assisted dying bill drafted by the Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur is being published.

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