The London Mayor said Labour supporters would be \u201cdelusional\u201d if they did not recognise the difficulties the party had had since winning power in July 2024.<\/p>\n
After taking Labour into power at Downing Street for the first time since 2010, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has seen his party\u2019s popularity slump in the polls, amid criticism over issues such as welfare reforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a tough first year,\u201d Sir Sadiq conceded.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he insisted that Labour supporters \u201cneed to have the humility to recognise\u201d that \u201cotherwise we are being delusional\u201d.<\/p>\n
The London Mayor, who was one\u00a0of the most powerful Labour politicians until Sir Keir became Prime Minister, added: \u201cThose people that say it has been a great first year\u2026 I think they are letting the party down.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hasn\u2019t been a great first year. There have been great things that have happened in this first year, around the rights for renters, around the rights for workers, around energy security, and I could go on.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut as first years go, it has not been a great first year.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, he said the \u201cgood news\u201d is his party has \u201cgot another four years to make sure we turn this around\u201d.<\/p>\n
The London Mayor \u2013 who is a Liverpool FC supporter \u2013 said if Labour was in a football match, they would be \u201ctwo-nil down\u201d<\/p>\n
But continuing his analogy, he said that only 15 or 20 minutes of the match had gone, with minutes still to play and to \u201cwin this game\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIt is really important now we really pick things up because I think we are two-nil down.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the great news is we have turned it round before, we have won games before where we\u2019re two nil down, we can do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
His comments came as he said that many people who backed the party last year had \u201clent us their vote\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sir Sadiq said: \u201cThey didn\u2019t sprint toward Labour at the ballot box, they lent us their vote, gave us the benefit of the doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n
After over a decade out of power at Westminster, he also said that the party had \u201clost the memory of running things\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sir Sadiq said: \u201cIt has taken some time for the Labour Party, the Labour Government, to understand how the machinery of government works.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he added: \u201cThere are some really, really good people in the cabinet, there is a good back office team as well. So I have got confidence we will turn it round.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWith Keir and the team we\u2019ve got in Number 10, and across Whitehall, Westminster, we\u2019ve got a great team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are not performing to the level I know they can perform at. I\u2019m not being critical of them, I think they themselves would admit they can do much more.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I am hoping the next three, four years you will really see the best of this government.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The London Mayor said Labour supporters would be \u201cdelusional\u201d if they did not recognise the difficulties the party…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-352664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115046390740257578","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}