Senior Labour politician brags Keir Starmer could win the next four General Elections

By Brendan Carlin Political Correspondent

00:03 21 May 2023, updated 00:09 21 May 2023

Labour was plunged into a new ‘hubris’ row amid hopes that Sir Keir Starmer could eclipse Sir Tony Blair and win the next four General Elections.

Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting astonished even party colleagues last week with his comments in an interview with the LabourList website.

Mr Streeting said: ‘If we get the first term right, we’ll get a second term, potentially even a third and under Keir’s leadership, why not go for the fourth?’

That would put him ahead of even Sir Tony, who won three successive election victories for Labour.

Last night, Mr Streeting’s allies denied he was being over-confident by highlighting Rishi Sunak’s boast last week that he would still be Prime Minister after the General Election despite this month’s disastrous local council polls.

Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer attends the launch of Roundhouse Works

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrive for a family photo at the Grand Prince Hotel in Hiroshima during the G7 Summit

But Labour colleagues privately mocked the Shadow Health Secretary, with one saying: ‘Rishi’s talking about the outcome of the next election – Wes seems to be talking about the result of the next one but three.’

And one former Labour Minister told The Mail On Sunday: ‘People should not get drunk on the local election results and Labour frontbenchers should stop measuring up the curtains for their ministerial offices.

‘There’s a long way to go.’

The row comes just two weeks after Sir Keir was accused by one of his own backbenchers of ‘doing a Kinnock’ after predicting a Labour General Election victory on the back of the local election results.

Sir Keir boasted ‘we are on course for a Labour majority’ in an alleged echo of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s triumphant Sheffield rally before the 1992 election, which Labour went on to lose.

The backbencher warned Sir Keir ‘Blair would never have boasted like that’, especially as analysis of local election results suggested the party could still fall short of a Commons majority in a General Election. That was despite the Tories losing over 1,000 council seats, Labour gaining more than 500 and the Liberal Democrats adding over 400.

However, Sir Keir’s office has denied he was being complacent, insisting council victories in some key areas ‘showed that Keir’s changed Labour Party is on course to form the next government’.