Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer returned to Barnet where he launched his London local election campaign to celebrate his party taking power there for the first time.
He hailed the “fantastic” result almost a month to the day after he started his party’s campaign in the borough and an hour after the final result confirmed Labour’s victory.
Party activists and councillors saw him pose for pictures with the council’s new leader Barry Rawlings and tell them he could “hardly believe” the string of victories in the capital.
He said: “Wandsworth, they’ve been saying that for years you’ll never take Wandsworth.
“We’ve just done it. Westminster, an absolutely astonishing result, and here in Barnet.”
He also referred to the anti-semitism scandal that many local Labour figures felt lost them the last election in an area with a large Jewish community, saying: “It was important to me to come to Barnet because my first words as leader of our party when I took over in April 2020 was we were going to root out anti-semitism from our party, not tolerate it anymore in our party, change our party and I said the test of that would be weather the voters trust us again in places like Barnet and they’ve done it.”
Earlier on Friday morning Cllr Rawlings hailed “a historic victory, a landslide victory” and told the new majority Labour group voters wanted a “safer, brighter, cleaner Barnet” and only half-jokingly told them: “You can have five minutes gloating but then it’s down to work”.
He told the Standard the victory was down to “a mixture of national and local” issues.
He said his conservative opponents lost voters ‘who felt alienated from the party” over the Partygate scandal.
He said: “I think people felt it isn’t the Conservative Party they wanted. They believe in the rule of law and people obeying the law.”
Tory leader Daniel Thomas said the Labour victory in Barnet “does not bode well” for the Conservatives for a general election.
He said: “I think this is a warning shot from Conservative supporters and I think our loss today is not only due to the fact that I have just mentioned but also a fair number of Conservative voters who just didn’t go out to vote, stayed at home.”
He said his party had been caught in “a perfect storm” as Labour took overall control of the borough.
He said: “We’ve been 12 years in government, the cost of living crisis, Partygate and I think those three factors are why we are having such a bad night.”
He said he would reserve judgement on the Prime Minister’s future until the full national picture emerged but said his party had lost good councillors because of the government’s unpopularity.
He also said the “changing demographics” of outer London potentially strengthened the Labour vote as did changes to ward boundaries.
Nine two-member wards, and 15 with three members, have replaced the previous 21 three-member wards.
He said many voters took the chance of changing wards to change their votes.
The victory proved to be third time lucky for Labour. It has been the party’s top London target in the last three local elections.
The party failed narrowly to win control in 2014, while 2018 saw the council swing further towards the Conservatives before today’s turnaround.
