Starmer says he cannot ‘turn the taps on’ to fix crisis in council funding

Labour leader was asked how party would plug £4bn gap at launch of its local election campaign in West Midlands

Keir Starmer has told voters he cannot “turn the taps on” to fix the crisis in local authority funding as he was quizzed on how Labour would plug councils’ £4bn gap at the launch of its local election campaign.

“I can’t pretend that we could turn the taps on to pretend the damage hasn’t been done to the economy, it has,” he said. “There’s no magic money tree that we can waggle the day after the election. No, they’ve broken the economy, they’ve done huge damage.”