Election 2024: ‘No no-go areas’ for Labour, Starmer vows amid final campaign days

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer gives a speech during a visit to Hitchin, Hertfordshire, while on the General Election campaign trail. Picture date: Monday July 1, 2024. PA Photo. See PA story POLITICS Election Labour. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

The Labour Party has “no ‘no-go’ areas”, Sir Keir Starmer has vowed, as he pledged to extend the “task of earning every vote” across the whole of Britain.

Sir Keir spoke during a day of campaigning which has taken him to seats in the Conservative heartlands of southern England, including Hitchin and Bletchley.

Speaking at the Shoulder of Mutton pub in Little Horwood, alongside Buckingham and Bletchley candidate Callum Anderson, Starmer was asked if it was true that there were now no ‘no go areas’ for his party.

“There are no ‘no-go’ areas,” he responded, after speaking to a crowd of activists in the pub garden.

“I want to come to places like this, places we wouldn’t normally win, because I think it’s important we see the task of earning every vote as one that is across the whole of the country.

“I do think in many cases people who have voted Tory for many years have become disillusioned with the Tory Party now after 14 years of chaos and division.

“And they are looking elsewhere, and do want change.”

It comes after a poll for the Times this weekend forecast Labour could be on course to win up to 450 seats.

Starmer added: “I haven’t been in any constituency, this one included yet, [and] encountered anybody whose response to me has been ‘things are pretty good, I really like it, I just want more of this’.

“Almost everyone, to different degrees of strength, has said we need change and that’s why our message that you only get change if you vote for it is very important.  That’s the first reason.”

And he said the second reason was “much more central to what I want us to achieve in government if we are able to get into government”.

He told reporters: “We want a UK Labour government that is for the whole of the UK and strong and powerful voices from every part of the UK.

“I don’t want a Labour government that’s based on having won in some places but not other places. And that’s why it’s important for us to come to places like this as well.”