Sadiq Khan says government is ‘like a team 2-0 down 20 minutes into the match’

Sir Sadiq Khan has given a brutal assessment of the government’s first 14 months in power – but insisted there’s time to turn it around.

In a football analogy, the London Mayor told a fringe event at Labour’s annual party conference that his party was the equivalent of two-nil down after playing less than 20 minutes of the match.

Ipsos revealed yesterday that Sir Keir Starmer is more unpopular than any other Prime Minister in the history of the company’s approval polls, which date back to Margaret Thatcher.

That means he has a lower rating than Boris Johnson in the aftermath of Partygate, or Liz Truss after her mini-budget.

Asked about the findings, Sir Sadiq told an event organised by The Times that his party ‘can’t pretend things are better than they are’.

He said voters were angry about the lethargic pace of change since the election, which he blamed on the ‘inheritance’ left by the Tories, before calling on the PM to ‘accelerate the pace of delivery’.

The Mayor continued: ‘We’ve also got to be better at telling the story we’re trying to do.

‘If this was a game of football, what I’d say is it’s a 90-minute game, we’ve played almost 20 minutes and we’re two-nil down.

‘We’re two-nil down, and we’ve got to make sure we use the rest of our time in the game, three-and-a-half years, to turn it around. I think it’s possible.’

A Liverpool supporter, Sir Sadiq used the example of the time his team were three-nil down at half time in the 2005 Champions League final, only to defeat Milan on penalties.

It was the latest in a series of assessments from top Labour figures at the conference, pondering how their party has fallen so quickly so fast.

Among the most high-profile has been Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham, who has been scathing in his criticism of the government as questions swirl around a potential bid from him to replace Sir Keir.

Speaking at a different event taking place simultaneously with the Sadiq Khan Q&A, Burnham said his intention has simply been to suggest new approaches.

He said: ‘The thing that I’m doing is putting forward ideas that in any scenario – whoever is the leader – I think Labour needs to take on board. That is what I’m saying.

‘The only thing I’ve launched is a debate about how do we get a plan together to beat Reform. I’m of course talking about the General Election.’

Like his London counterpart, Burnham also called on the government to ‘tell a story about this country and where do we want this country to go’.

Elsewhere in the Times event, Sir Sadiq declined to follow the PM in describing Reform’s recently announced deportation policy as ‘racist’.

He told the audience: ‘I think it’s a really loaded word, and so I’m very careful when I use it for the obvious reason, I don’t want to devalue this really powerful word’.

However, the Mayor conceded the occasional need to ‘call out people’, pointing out he recently used the word to describe US President Donald Trump.

This afternoon, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood outlined Labour’s plans to reform the legal immigration system with a shake-up of indefinite leave to remain.

In a speech on the main conference stage, she announced the status would only be granted to people who meet a number of conditions after arriving in the country.

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