Keir Starmer has repeatedly refused to rule out a deal with the Liberal Democrats if Labour fails to win a majority at the next general election during an interview after last week’s local elections.
The Labour leader has said he is focused on securing a Labour majority government “with a workable majority”, which he believes is achievable based on the party’s performance in that vote.
Labour officials have expressed their delight at the party’s performance last week, including taking the Kent council of Medway, which the party has not controlled since it was created in 1998.
Labour gained more than 600 council seats, while the Conservatives lost nearly 1,000. Pollsters called the results a terrible night for the Tories, but not a convincing enough win for Labour to be sure of forming a majority government after the next election.
When pressed during a round of broadcast interviews on Tuesday about possible coalition deals, Starmer failed to explicitly rule out a possible coalition deal with the Lib Dems on more than seven occassions.
Insisting he is “going for an outright majority”, Starmer told Sky News: “I’m not answering hypotheticals but we’re aiming for a Labour majority and that’s what we’re confident about.
“I want a clear majority Labour government. And one of the reasons we’ve made progress this last three years is, for all the noises off, we’ve kept a laser-like focus on the progress we needed to make as a party.
“We made really good progress in these local elections, and now we will kick on and kick on for a majority Labour government so we can bring about the change we need,” he added.
But the Labour leader was willing to explicitly rule out a pact with the SNP as he said, “absolutely clear there are no terms in which we will do a deal with the SNP”.
When asked again about a deal with the Lib Dems in an interview with the BBC, Starmer instead focused his attention on the SNP. “Absolutely there is no basis for a deal at all with the SNP because of their politics of separation,” he said.
“I do not believe it’s in the best interest of the United Kingdom. Now, obviously, you asked me about the Lib Dems and other scenarios. These are hypotheticals for the future. I want to be clear that based on those results we’re on course for a Labour majority. That’s what has been my ambition for the country ever since I took over as leader, that continues to be my ambition.”
Last year Starmer repeatedly dismissed the possibility of even an informal post-election deal with Liberal Democrats, after a similar pledge about the Scottish National party.
When interviewed by Bloomberg in July, the Labour leader said his party would not go into coalition with “anyone”, including the Lib Dems, who under current polling could win a series of Conservative-held seats in the next election.
The Lib Dems have not ruled out the possibility of a deal. A spokesperson said: “We are totally focused on the issues that really matter to people – the cost-of-living crisis, the failure of this government to manage our NHS and the filthy sewage water companies are being allowed to pump into our rivers.”
Starmer’s equivocation around a possible coalition comes as Tony Blair warned him to avoid complacency, despite winning hundreds of seats last week.
The former prime minister told Bloomberg TV that Starmer has “done a pretty good job pulling the Labour party back from where it was”, but added, “of course you can’t be complacent about these things at all”.
The official Liberal Democrat position on a possible post-election coalition remains similarly ambiguous, although much can be read into the fact that their leader, Ed Davey, has definitively ruled out a deal with the Conservatives but not Labour.
The party, which remains scarred by its experience in the 2010-15 coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives, says that on a Labour pact it cannot comment on hypothetical scenarios, and that it is “totally focused on the issues that really matter to people”.
The assumption is, however, that the Lib Dems would be open to cooperation.
The justification for ruling out a pact with the Tories is that the Lib Dems are locked in so many electoral battles with them, and cannot both promise to try to remove as many Conservative MPs as possible while holding open the possibility of future coalition.
