Keri Starmer defends attack ads targeting Rishi Sunak ahead of Thursday’s local elections

Sir Keir Starmer has defended attack ads targeting Rishi Sunak personally ahead of the local elections, as he steered away from claims Labour is set to win hundreds of council seats.

The opposition leader said he personally stands by the Twitter ads accusing the PM of not wanting to see child sex abusers jailed, because of the Tories’ ‘unforgivable’ approach to criminal justice.

The advert and subsequent ones targeting other policy areas provoked a storm of protests from all across politics, including suggestions they were racist.

But Sir Keir told the Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme they were not racist, adding: ‘This idea that somehow you can ship in a new prime minister – we’ve had five of them now in the last 13 years – that somehow doesn’t bear responsibility.

They have broken our criminal justice system. It is unforgivable what they have done’.

In the same interview Sir Keir played down electoral hopes for Labour in Thursday’s vote, despite a new poll giving it an 18-point lead.

He suggested that anything other than a gain of seats for the Tories would be bad for the party – when the same seats were last contested in 2019 it was the Conservatives’ second-worst result ever.

The Tories have suggested they could lose 1,000 seats – meaning they could claim any result better than this as a victory.

‘For the Conservative Party the baseline is on the floor and they should be making gains and if they can’t make gains on that awful set of the results then I think there are serious questions as to whether Rishi Sunak is going backwards in fact in terms of their electoral prospects,’ he said.

‘So it’s a difficult cycle because of that baseline but I think really the question will be why aren’t the Conservatives making significant gains.’

He added he was ‘humble’ about the process and knows Labour has to ‘earn every vote, but we do want to make progress’.

Asked about the adverts, Transport Secretary Mark Harper told Sky News: ‘You judge people in politics by what they do.

‘People remember it wasn’t that long ago that the Prime Minister set up a taskforce specifically to deal with one aspect of that issue which is to do with grooming gangs, which is a subject that Labour doesn’t even want to talk about.

‘I think if people judge the Prime Minister by his actions, they will see that the substance of that ad was nonsense.’

He added: ‘I think personal attacks are not very helpful. Many politicians, particularly female politicians, have to put up with a lot of abuse, online abuse, and I think all people in leadership positions should be trying to conduct politics I think with a slightly different tone.

‘I think it is a very disappointing approach from him (Sir Keir Starmer), but I don’t actually think the public will buy it actually.’