Shadow cabinet warns Sir Keir Starmer not to lose sight of cost of living crisis | UK News

Sir Keir Starmer has been confronted by his shadow cabinet over failing to gain enough ground on the cost of living crisis amid concern that he risks becoming waylaid by “partygate”.

The Labour leader is understood to have been challenged by Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, at the most recent shadow cabinet meeting.

He was warned that the party must not “lose sight” of the cost of living crisis by getting too “distracted” by the “partygate” scandal, a source close to Ms Nandy said. The source added that this was the “overwhelming view” of the shadow cabinet.

“It feels particularly acute with the [local] elections coming up,” the source added. “She was saying that as we go forward, the cost of living is the biggest thing for people and let’s make sure we don’t get dragged away from it.

“It was more a warning about not getting waylaid in the future. She is very much of the position that ‘partygate’ does matter – but ultimately that is the sort of thing that is priced in. Ultimately the sort of thing that will make a huge difference to peoples’ lives is the cost of living – we mustn’t be too distracted from this in the coming weeks and months.”

On Monday night, ITV reported that Boris Johnson may not have yet been sent a questionnaire about his presence at a “bring your own booze” party in the Downing Street garden on May 20, 2020, over which some officials are understood to have already received fines.  

Mr Johnson has already received a £50 fixed penalty notice after attending a small gathering to mark his 56th birthday in June the same year. 

But police are looking into five further events that the Prime Minister attended and it is widely expected that he will receive further fines before the investigation is complete.

It comes after Sir Keir was forced to defend Labour’s determination to keep the pressure on Mr Johnson over Downing Street parties.

Asked on the BBC Sunday Politics show whether he had focused too much on “partygate”, he said Labour could not just “pass over” the fact that Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, had been fined along with scores of officials.

“They have been found to have broken the law – the criminal law at that,” he said. “No other prime minister in the history of our country has ever been found to have broken the law in office before. And I don’t think we can just pass over it.”

Conservative Party sources have insisted “partygate” is not coming up on the doorstep nearly as much as they expected it to as activists campaign for the May elections.

Some Tory leaders outside London said they did not believe the party would be punished at the polls, with strategists setting their sights on taking control of Sunderland City Council for the first time in its 48-year history.

Pollsters Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now have predicted that the Conservatives are on course to lose more than 800 council seats in next month’s local elections.

However, other pollsters have said the findings overstate the scale of any Labour gains, with one Labour MP calling them Tory “expectation management”.

Speaking on ITV’s This Morning, Sir Keir appeared to acknowledge that Downing Street parties are not at the forefront of voters’ minds, saying: “Going into the local elections my focus is actually not on ‘partygate’, it’s on the cost-of-living crisis because that is where – as I go around the country – so many people are saying: ‘I am really struggling.'”

A Labour source said: “We obviously know the cost of living comes up all the time on the doorstep – it genuinely has been a focus for a long time. Certainly you can’t ignore what is happening with the PM, but a lot of the time we are talking about energy bills, the price of fuel – these are bread and butter issues.”