UK opposition Labor leader says there is still a long way to go to win power

LONDON, July 22 (Reuters) – The failure of Britain’s Labor Party to take the former parliamentary seat of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in this week’s election shows the opposition party still has a long way to go to power, leader Keir Starmer said on Saturday.

Labor won a once secure Conservative parliamentary seat in the north of England on the same dayBut the narrow defeat at Uxbridge and South Ruislip has given Prime Minister Rishi Sunak some breathing space as he seeks to reduce Labour’s huge lead in the polls ahead of a national election expected next year.

“If anyone needs to be reminded that there is still a long way to go, Uxbridge is the reminder,” Starmer said in a speech at the Labor National Policy Forum. “That result at Uxbridge shows that there is never a reason to be complacent.”

Starmer saying On Friday the expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), planned for next month by the capital’s Labor mayor, Sadiq Khan, had been decisive in preventing his candidate from winning in Uxbridge.

For his part, Khan said ULEZ’s expansion policy is still the right one.

The Conservatives did attack the flagship anti-pollution policy central to his campaign.

The expansion of ULEZ has unleashed a fierce debate across the city, pitting the mayor and health care activists against those who say they cannot tolerate another economic coup at a time when costs of living are soaring.

“In an election, politics is important,” Starmer said Saturday. “We are doing something very wrong if the policies put forward by the Labor Party end up in every single Tory (Conservative) pamphlet. We have to face that and learn our lesson.”

“We have to seriously ask ourselves: are our priorities the priorities of the workers or are they just baggage that shows them that we don’t see the country through their eyes?”

Reporting by Kylie MacLellan Editing by Helen Popper

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