Local elections 2026: Starmer slams Polanski's Greens and Farage's Reform UK for false 'shortcuts' to boost London

Sir Keir Starmer hit out at Zack Polanski’s Greens and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK for seeking to win over voters with false “shortcuts” to tackle London’s problems.

He also turned his fire on Reform for threatening to “drive a wedge between communities” in London.

With Labour braced for heavy losses in the May 7 local elections, Sir Keir appealed to Londoners to back his party so the 21 councils it controls in the city can carry on working with the Government on housing, transport, tackling the cost-of-living and other key issues.

“The truth is, when you focus on delivery, you quickly see there are no shortcuts,” the Prime Minister told The Standard.

Keir Starmer: I'll protect renters in London from rogue landlords
Taking aim at the Greens, Sir Keir, MP for Holborn and St Pancras, added: “They say they want to tackle that housing crisis, but time and time again, they have voted against legislation to do just that.

He accused Reform of planning to replace a taxpayer-funded, free-at-the-point of use NHS with a health service based on an insurance system.

“Beyond that, their approach risks doing something even more damaging: driving a wedge between communities that have always been strongest when they stand together,” Sir Keir stressed.

“That is not who we are as a city.

And it is not who we should become.”
Sir Keir has avoided a Commons inquiry into whether he misled Parliament over the appointment of Lord Mandelson as British ambassador to the US, with the ongoing scandal having plunged his premiership into crisis.

But, laying out Labour ’s platform for the local elections in London, he sought to focus on issues with a more direct impact on voters, including addressing the plight of renters in the city.

He stressed that the Renters Rights Act would end no-fault evictions, target unfair rent hikes, and stop bidding wars.

“The nearly three million renters living in London can now have more confidence in planning their futures without worrying about what a rogue landlord might mean for them,” he added.

A shake-up of the leasehold system would cap ground rents and reform the “outdated system” that left a third of Londoners at the “mercy of opaque charges and distant freeholders”.

Amid the ongoing cost-of-living crisis , Londoners are working record hours, new figures showed last week.

The Prime Minister stressed that five million Londoners will benefit from the “biggest uplift in workers’ rights in a generation” including banning exploitative zero-hour contracts, day-one rights to statutory sick pay and parental leave.

He also highlighted rises in the minimum wage and the lifting of the two-child benefit cap.

“I am not naïve to the pressures that families across London are still facing,” Sir Keir added, with unemployment in the capital having spiralled to the highest in the country.

“I know how the cost of living continues to weigh heavily on every aspect of daily life.”
The Prime Minister is facing the threat of a leadership challenge if Labour has disastrous results in the local elections in England, including in London, and for the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament.

With just days to go until the crucial polls, he appealed to Londoners, stressing: “Time and time again, it is Labour councils, working in partnership with a Labour government, that turn national decisions into real change on the ground here in London.”