Thursday’s elections will be ‘tough’, PM admits as campaigning enters final week

Sir Keir Starmer has conceded that the upcoming Runcorn and Helsby by-election will be “tough”, but insisted Labour had “a positive case to tell”.

The poll, set to run alongside the local elections on Thursday, is expected to be a tightly fought contest between Labour and Reform UK.

The by-election follows the resignation of former MP Mike Amesbury, who won a clear majority for Labour in the general election but then received a 10-week suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to punching a constituent last year.

At the same time, voters will go to the polls in 23 council areas across England and vote in six mayoral contests across devolved regions in elections that are forecast to see Reform make gains at the expense of the Conservatives and Labour.

Speaking to broadcasters on Monday, the Prime Minister acknowledged that the elections would be “a challenge”, saying: “It’s going to be tough.

“Most governments after a general election face a tough set of local elections at the first opportunity afterwards, and of course, we’ve had to take tough but right decisions.”

But he insisted that “record investment put into the NHS” and the rise in the minimum wage meant Labour had “a positive story to tell”.

He also accused Reform of wanting to charge people to use the NHS, voting against workers’ rights and having a “pro-Putin foreign policy”.

He said: “We’ve got a positive case to tell. It’ll be tight, I know that, every vote will count and we are fighting for every vote.”

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, whose party currently holds around half the seats up for election on Thursday, has also acknowledged that the local elections present her with a challenge.

Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Monday, she said the Tories needed to “fight for every single vote” and “remind people about our record and how well we have done at local government level”.

She said: “This is not a referendum on national issues, but local ones.

“I’ve been travelling all around the country, and one of the councillors I was with, we were on a doorstep, and he showed a leaflet of Reform saying ‘we’re going to stop the boats’. That’s not what people are voting on on Thursday.

“We have said that we are going to tackle immigration, but this week’s elections are about who’s going to fix the roads, pick up the bins.”

Speaking to LBC later, she said Mr Farage had “lost 20% of his MPs” – a reference to the suspension of Rupert Lowe from the party, reducing its parliamentary ranks to four.

“If you can’t manage a group of four, how’s he going to manage a group 400?” she said.

Meanwhile, the Government is already planning how to counter Reform in the aftermath of the elections, according to the Telegraph.

The newspaper has reported that ministers plan to tighten restrictions on immigration in the coming weeks in order to stave off the threat from Mr Farage, who has taken a hard line on the issue.

In a taste of what could come in a forthcoming White Paper on immigration, ministers on Sunday night announced plans to crack down on people giving immigration legal advice without proper registration.