Keir Starmer says Corbyn's leadership of Labour 'number one' issue during December election

'The leadership of the Labour Party was number one, fair or unfair'

(Getty)

Sir Keir Starmer has said Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour was the “number one” issue that voters raised on the doorstep before the party’s disastrous election defeat in December.

The new Labour leader also reiterated his criticisms of the party’s most recent manifesto for government, describing the radical document as an “overload” with “too much in it”.

Sir Keir, who was hesitant to criticise his predecessor during the internal leadership election contest, said he visited over 40 constituencies during the winter election to speak with voters.

Speaking to the Financial Times, he said: “The topic of conversation was always what was coming up… anybody who knocks on doors knows a number of things came up. The leadership of the Labour Party was number one, fair or unfair.”

Sir Keir, who campaigned for Labour to adopt a pro-EU stance and was largely sidelined by party strategists during the campaign, also said Brexit was another issue raised on the doorstep of voters.

But, he added: “Anybody who thinks that ‘but for the Brexit issue Labour would have won’ I think is probably heading for problems at the next [election].”

On Labour’s strategy during the coronavirus pandemic, Sir Keir said his party needed to be “constructive” when criticising No 10’s failures, as he confirmed in a separate interview he would support another extension to the UK-wide lockdown.

Pressed on the issue on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme, he said he believed the restrictions should remain in place until “we are sure the infection rate has gone down”.

Later today, Boris Johnson will decide whether to extend the lockdown by another three weeks, but is not expected to address the nation until Sunday evening where he will also set out the government’s next steps in the crisis and any restrictions that may be eased in the coming weeks.

Sir Keir added: “I would be very surprised if the government doesn’t reimpose the lockdown when it comes up for review later on and we will support them in that. This is not about lifting the lockdown now, it’s about planning for the future.

“Of course we want the number of infected cases to go down, we want the death toll to go down but we’ve got to also plan for the future and I’m convinced testing, tracing and isolating is going to have to be a part of any strategy fro the future.

“But if that’s going to happen the planning needs to go in now because we need many many more tests than we’ve got already”.