Keir Starmer has urged Mirror readers to vote Labour to “get household bills down and Britain back up off the mat”.
In an exclusive article on the eve of polling day, the Labour leader blasted Boris Johnson over Partygate, Tory sleaze and the cost-of-living crisis.
He writes: “If like me, you believe Britain deserves so much better than this out of touch, out of ideas Tory Government - that they need to buck their ideas up or get out - then today vote for a party that’s on your side.”
Mr Starmer said the Government was doing the "bare minimum" for voters and accused them of trying to "pick the pockets of working people" with tax hikes.
He also described Tory attacks on Angela Rayner and himself as a "compliment", saying: "It’s because they know they’ve got nothing else left."
Mr Starmer accused the Conservatives of wasting time with "absurd distractions and deflections" over footage of him drinking a beer with colleagues in April 2021 in Durham during campaigning for the Hartlepool by-election.
And he blasted "smears" levelled against his deputy Angela Rayner, who was the subject of widely criticised Tory briefings that she crossed and uncrossed her legs in the Commons to distract Boris Johnson.
Voters head to the polls on Thursday for the local elections, in the first electoral test since Partygate revelations emerged and the cost of living crisis began to bite.
Some 4,359 seats are up for grabs in 146 English councils, along with 1,234 in Wales on all 22 local authorities.
Another 1,226 are being contested in 32 Scottish councils.
In Northern Ireland, voters will elect 30 MLAs in a bid to break the Stormont deadlock. The result could plunge the nation into fresh political turmoil if, as expected, nationalists Sinn Fein top the ballot.
Boris Johnson is expected to face fresh challenges to his premiership from Tory rebels if the Conservatives haemorrhage support at the polls.
Results are due to trickle in from the early hours of Friday.
Speaking at Southampton Airport, Mr Johnson said: “When you look at the council taxes, the efficiency of Conservative councillors versus Labour councillors, it’s Labour councils that go bankrupt, it’s Conservative councils that deliver better value for money.”
Read Keir Starmer's exclusive article in full:
I have a simple belief about how this country should be run - ministers should wake up every day and think: “How can we make things better for working people?”
It’s the least the British people should expect from their government - the bare minimum. But it’s not what we have at the moment.
Just look at what Boris Johnson and his chums have been up to: refurbishing his flat and trying to cover up how it was paid for; scrambling to get their fellow Tory MP Owen Paterson off the hook when he broke the rule; writing laws they expect everyone else to follow and then breaking them over and over again - a constant drip-drip of sleaze and scandal.
One rule for them, another for the rest of us.
I’ll say nothing of some of the twisted behaviour of recent weeks - except to say at least one Tory MP has done the decent thing and resigned.
Their failure to get on with their jobs would be shameful at any time. But during a once in a lifetime cost-of-living crisis, it’s a disgrace.
Working people are paying the price for this Government. Household bills are through the roof. Prices at the checkouts and the petrol pumps are barely believable. Wages aren’t increasing to make up for it.
Incredibly, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have chosen this moment to pick the pockets of working people with their damaging National Insurance rise.
It’s the fifteenth tax rise since they took office; high-tax Tories, squeezing you to the pips.
Labour would do things very differently. For months, we’ve been calling on the Government to give people a break.
This week, BP announced their latest blockbuster profits - £5billion for the first three months of this year, all down to rising oil and gas prices.
At the same time, pensioners are struggling to heat their homes and pay their bills; that’s not right.
It’s why we’d have a one-off tax on the oil and gas giants’ unexpected profits.
Every fair-minded person can see that it’s the right solution - even the oil bosses themselves seem relaxed about it.
But Boris Johnson has his head buried in the sand. He’s had months to see sense and change course. But he hasn’t.
Ever since he was found to have repeatedly broken the lockdown rules he forced the country to follow, he’s had only one aim: to save his own job.
The Tories have spent this election campaign coming up with absurd distractions and deflections - attacking our brilliant deputy leader Angela Rayner simply because she’s a working class woman; throwing smears at me for days and days on end – for having a takeaway and a beer while I was working late at night.
Angela and I take it as a compliment when they attack us. It’s because they know they’ve got nothing else left.
But the British public shouldn’t have to put up with a government that refuses to take seriously the very real issues facing you and your family: soaring crime and anti-social behaviour that plagues communities across the country; GP waiting times that are getting longer and longer - and, yes, the cost-of-living crisis.
I make no apology for banging on about these things; they are what matter.
If, like me, you believe Britain deserves so much better than this out-of-touch, out-of-ideas Tory Government, that they need to buck their ideas up or get out, then today vote for a party that’s on your side.
A party with a proper plan to get household bills down and Britain back up off the mat. Vote Labour.
