A former Sheffield MP and Labour minister has expressed his disappointment at the city’s local election results but has backed Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Richard Caborn was MP for Sheffield Central from 1983 to 2010 and held positions across three ministerial departments in Tony Blair’s New Labour government, serving as Minister for Sport for six years.
He spoke exclusively to ShefNews after Labour lost 13 councillors in Sheffield’s local elections, including council leader Tom Hunt, who was unseated by the Green Party in Walkley.
Mr Caborn said: “It was a disastrous result for Sheffield and I’m obviously very disappointed that many very good colleagues who were doing a good job were defeated.
He said: “It mirrored the feeling in the country. People are disenchanted, and it was a vote against the government. The government has a significant majority, it has three years to run, and it’s had a big wake-up call. It’s now got to respond to that.”
Sheffield City Council remains under no overall control, with Labour still marginally the largest party, but the Green Party gained six councillors and Reform UK gained 12, reflecting advances for both parties nationally.
Caborn, who was awarded the Freedom of the City in 2022, said: “The party got squeezed from both left and right.
“The thing you’ve got to evaluate is whether Reform is a protest vote by the white working-class or if it’s a much more ingrained and deeper move towards nationalistic right-wing politics.”
Following the local election results, pressure has been growing on the Prime Minister, with a leadership contest widely expected and over 90 Labour MPs publicly calling for him to resign. Caborn, however, has called for stability.
He said: “My view would have been to consolidate around Keir. He was poor on communications, but he was well respected on the international stage, and I have a lot of respect for the guy.
“If you had said four or five years ago that the Labour Party were back in power with a majority of over a hundred, you would have said ‘don’t be daft’.
“The debate that is going on is about the pace of implementing change, not fundamental changes in policy. I do not believe there’s any major difference between Starmer, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham.”