Sir Keir Starmer has said he “gets” why his party suffered defeat to Reform UK in the Runcorn by-election, as he promised to go “further” in delivering change.
The prime minister said the result in Runcorn and Helsby – where Labour lost to Nigel Farage’s party by six votes – was “very, very close” but that he didn’t want to give a “standard answer” by suggesting opposition parties do well in by-elections.
Asked by Sky News what he believed his government had done in the 10 months to cause voters in traditional Labour strongholds to shun the party, he replied: “I want to respond by saying I get it.”
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Sir Keir said Labour was elected to “deliver change” and argued that the evidence of that was beginning to show with NHS waiting lists coming down and more appointments being created.
However, he said the message he was taking away from the results was that “we must deliver that change even more quickly. We must go even further.”
The by-election in Runcorn and Helsby was triggered after the previous Labour MP, Mike Amesbury, resigned following his conviction for punching a constituent.
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Reform candidate Sarah Pochin won with 12,645 votes, compared with the 12,639 secured by Labour candidate Karen Shore, making it the closest by-election result since records began in 1945.
Speaking after the result was declared, Mr Farage told Sky News that Labour’s vote collapsed because of a “loss of confidence” and the fact “no one knows what the prime minister really stands for”.
He said working people were fed up with higher taxes and illegal immigration, adding: “It’s a sense of fairness and what’s right and what’s wrong bordering even on resentment.”
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He added: “We now are the opposition party in the United Kingdom to the Labour Party and the Tories, frankly, are a waste of space.”
Hours after the Runcorn result was declared, several Labour MPs on the left of the party began to blame Sir Keir and policies such as cuts to welfare and winter fuel payments for the result.
John McDonnell, who was shadow chancellor under former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, described the party’s response to the results so far as “tin-eared”, and said supporters felt the party had “turned its back on them”.
Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, said the Runcorn defeat was “entirely avoidable” and “the direct result of the party leadership’s political choices”.
And Scottish Labour MP Brian Leishman said the first 10 months of the new Labour government “haven’t been good enough or what the people want” and added: “If we don’t improve people’s living standards then the next government will be an extreme right wing one.”
Asked whether the policy decisions taken by Labour had pushed its voters away, Sir Keir said such choices were necessary to fix the “broken economy” he inherited from the Tories.
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“The reason that we took the tough but right decisions in the budget was because we inherited a broken economy,” he told Sky News.
“Maybe other prime ministers would have walked past that, pretended it wasn’t there…I took the choice to make sure our economy was stable.”
He added: “Yes, they were tough decisions, they were the right decisions. Because of those decisions we are now seeing waiting lists coming down, something people desperately want.
“Because of that, pensioners are now £470 up as of last month, these are really important changes.”
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As well as the Runcorn by-election, voters took part in contests to elect more than 1,600 councillors across 23 local authorities on Thursday, along with four regional mayors and two local mayors.
Labour is defending 287 council seats, the Conservatives 996, the Liberal Democrats 207 and the Green Party 35, with the remainder held by Independents and other parties.
While Labour managed to hold on to its mayors in Doncaster and North Tyneside and for the West of England, Reform won the mayoralty in Greater Lincolnshire with a majority of nearly 40,000 votes.
Reform is also hoping to take control of Doncaster Council from Labour – the only local authority Labour has control of in this set of elections.
It has also gained control of Staffordshire County Council from the Tories, who previously controlled the council with 53 seats, with Labour on five and four independents.
