Prime Minister Keir Starmer has launched an attack on the Green party, warning that a vote for Labour's rivals could jeopardise new workers' rights coming into force on Monday. The measures include statutory sick pay from day one of illness, paternity and unpaid parental leave from the first day of employment, and the lifting of the two-child benefit cap.
Writing in the Guardian, Starmer said Labour offers both economic credibility and political will, claiming no other party can match this. He dismissed business figures and opponents of the changes as 'vested interests' who had warned against them. The prime minister framed the reforms as the biggest strengthening of workers' rights in a generation.
The comments come as Labour braces for potential losses in local elections on 7 May, facing challenges from Reform UK on the right and the Greens on the left. Recent YouGov polling placed the Greens in joint second place behind Reform, while a poll by Michael Ashcroft showed a three-way tie between the Greens, Conservatives, and Reform, each on 21%, with Labour on 17%.
A Green party spokesperson responded by calling Starmer's remarks 'desperate', asserting that the Greens are now the party of the working class. They claimed Labour had to be 'dragged into' giving new workers' rights and that the two-child cap was only ended after pressure from Green MPs and campaigners.
Starmer's pivot to the left comes amid pressure from potential leadership contenders including Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham. He compared the introduction of the measures to the Blair government's minimum wage introduction 27 years ago, despite ongoing criticism from Unite, a major Labour trade union backer, which described the Employment Rights Act as 'a shell of its former self'.
