Starmer hails his party's 'clear mandate' to deliver… despite only 20% of the public backing him and snipes that his cabinet is the least-qualified EVER
Sir Keir Starmer insisted yesterday he had a 'clear mandate' – despite only one in five of the electorate backing Labour.
The Prime Minister rejected concerns that he had won in a 'loveless landslide', with the lowest vote share of any winning party in modern times delivering a stonking majority of 174.
Speaking at his first Downing Street press conference, Sir Keir also said: 'I am restless for change.'
Asked by ITV's Robert Peston what it meant for his Government that '80 per cent per cent of British voters didn't vote for you', Sir Keir said: 'We clearly got a mandate from all four nations.
'For the first time in 20-plus years, we have a majority in England, in Scotland and in Wales. And that is a clear mandate to govern for all four corners of the United Kingdom.'
The new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer holding a press conference, following his first cabinet meeting at Downing Street
Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Angela Rayner. She is the first housing minister to have lived in social housing
Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband - a familiar political face to many having run against David Cameron in 2015
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy who has held a dizzying number of shadow roles, including for energy, foreign affairs and levelling up
He also said he had 'a mandate to do politics differently', adding: 'This will be a politics and a Government that is about delivery, is about service. Self-interest is yesterday's politics.' It came after Sir Keir used his first speech on the steps of No 10 to appeal to people who did not vote for him.
He said: 'Whether you voted Labour or not – in fact, especially if you did not – I say to you, directly, my Government will serve you. Politics can be a force for good – we will show that. And that is how we will govern.'
Sir Keir's 33.7 per cent vote share was far below Boris Johnson's 43.6 per cent in 2019 or the 40 per cent recorded by Jeremy Corbyn when he lost in 2017. Tony Blair got 43.2 per cent of the vote in 1997 when he won his 179 majority – only slightly higher than Sir Keir's. With turnout falling to 60 per cent, Labour's vote share means only one in five of those registered to vote backed the new governing party – a record low.
Polling expert Sir John Curtice said Labour's vote share was the lowest of any single-party government since the Second World War.
'This looks more like an election the Conservatives lost than one Labour won,' he added.
Sir Keir said change would not happen 'overnight' but insisted it would come 'within the early months and years of the Government', not the end of the first term.
David Lammy, the new Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs arriving in Downing Street to attend the first Cabinet meeting
Secretary of State for the Home Department Yvette Cooper leaving Downing Street after attending the first Cabinet meeting
Wes Streeting, the new Health Secretary. He is also the former president of the National Union of Students and has been a shadow minister for four years
Secretary of State for Business and Trade and President of the Board of Trade Jonathan Reynolds standing outside No 10
After the new Cabinet met for the first time yesterday, Sir Keir said: 'I had the opportunity to set out to my Cabinet precisely what I expect of them in terms of standards, delivery and the trust that the country has put in them.'
He added the Government would need to take 'tough decisions and take them early' and that there would be 'raw honesty' about what needed to be done.
He insisted this was 'not a sort of prelude to saying there's some tax decision that we didn't speak about before that we're going to announce now'.
The Prime Minister said it had been a 'moment in history' when his top team received their privy seals on Saturday morning. He added that he was proud to have Cabinet ministers who 'didn't have the easiest of starts in life' and reflect the 'aspiration' at the heart of Britain.
Claims that Sir Keir's Cabinet was the 'least qualified in history' went viral on social media yesterday alongside a list of the ministers' work experience before public office.
The Prime Minister used the press conference to declare that Rishi Sunak's Rwanda scheme for asylum seekers was 'dead and buried', saying: 'It has never acted as a deterrent, almost the opposite, because everybody has worked out – particularly the gangs that run this – that the chance of ever going to Rwanda was so slim, less than 1 per cent, that it was never a deterrent.
'I'm not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don't act as a deterrent.' Sir Keir set out plans to travel today to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, meeting their first ministers as he seeks to 'establish a way of working across the United Kingdom that will be different and better to the way of working that we've had in recent years'.
He will then travel to Washington DC for the Nato summit, where he will make his debut on the world stage as Prime Minister.
Support for Ukraine will be high on the agenda. Sir Keir said: 'It is for me to be absolutely clear that the first duty of my Government is security and defence, to make clear our unshakable support of Nato.'
He also suggested he was taking a more informal approach to what he was called in the top job.
Asked if he was getting used to being referred to as Prime Minister, he said: 'I'm very happy to be called Keir or Prime Minister.'
