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The politician campaigning to become Britain's next prime minister accused the ruling Conservatives on Thursday of leading the country into decline and despair during their 14 years in power and called on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to “hit the ground running” and move forward to hold new elections.
Sunak, whose party is trailing in opinion polls, resisted pressure for an early vote and said he wanted to wait until “the second half of this year”.
Kicking off a year likely to be dominated by election campaigning, Labor Party leader Keir Starmer urged voters to counter a “flood of cynicism” towards politicians. He said a Labor government would deliver “Project Hope” but ruled out major tax cuts or spending increases soon after an election.
Starmer is seeking to bring his left-of-center party, which has been out of office since 2010, back to power through an election that must take place by January 2025.
Opinion polls consistently give Labor a double-digit lead over Sunak's Conservatives, who have produced three prime ministers in 18 months amid a sputtering economy and a spate of ethics scandals. But Starmer is trying to warn his party against complacency and awaken disillusioned voters from apathy.
“Everyone agrees that we are in a huge mess,” Starmer said during a speech in the city of Bristol in southwest England. “The service sector is in shambles, an economy that doesn’t work for working people even when it’s growing, let alone now when it’s stagnant.”
He said that while most people agree “that Britain needs change… trust in politics is now so low and so weakened that no one believes you can make a difference.”
“Don’t listen when they say we’re all the same. We are not and never will be,” he added, saying voters had a choice between “a continued decline with the Tories or a national renewal with Labor.”
With inflation still high and the economy experiencing near-zero growth, Labor is cautious about financial promises. Starmer said Labor wanted to cut taxes but economic growth was the top priority.
“The first lever we want to pull, the first way we want to go is to grow our economy, because that is what has been missing for 14 years,” he said.
Starmer also said Labor's promise to invest 28 billion pounds ($36 billion) a year in green projects by 2030 depends on the state of public finances.
Starmer has led Labor back to the political center after taking over in 2020 from left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, who led the party to defeats in 2017 and 2019. He has abandoned Corbyn's opposition to Britain's nuclear weapons, supported military aid to Ukraine and apologized for anti-Semitism within the party under Corbyn, emphasizing the party's commitment to balance.
The 61-year-old politician hailed a resume that opponents had already used against him: a former human rights lawyer and former head of the public prosecutor's office. He said these roles meant he understood “the responsibilities of the judiciary and civil service and … the responsibilities of serious government.”
He called on Sunak to give the starting signal for an election campaign. Senior Labor officials have raised the possibility of an election in May – partly to put pressure on the prime minister.
But Sunak, who became prime minister in October 2022 through an internal Conservative leadership contest, suggested he is in no hurry to seek voters' verdict. He has the power to hold elections at any time before the deadline.
He said his “working assumption” was that the vote would take place in the second half of 2024.
“I want to move on, manage the economy well and lower people’s taxes. But I want to continue to tackle illegal migration,” Sunak told reporters. “So I still have a lot to do and I’m determined to continue making a difference for the British people.”