After these elections, prospects of a 1997-style landslide look remote, but just removing this government would be enough
Good, but not quite good enough. Keir Starmer might just swallow that as a description of Labour’s performance in Thursday’s local elections. The task he faces now is ensuring those words do not become his political epitaph.
Make no mistake, there is much for Labour to celebrate in these results. The party has turned the capital city into a Labour heartland, so that London councils that were once bywords for Thatcherism – Wandsworth and Westminster – have moved from blue to red. (A notable win was Labour’s capture of Barnet, home to the largest Jewish community in the country, and evidence that Starmer’s efforts at brand decontamination on that score have not been in vain.) But this is not merely a London phenomenon, but rather an urban England one: Labour is in charge in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Norwich, too.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
