UK Labour chief woos voters, tackles critics amid govt woes

BRIGHTON, England (AP) — The leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party took aim Wednesday at a Conservative government that has presided over empty gas pumps and one of Europe’s worst coronavirus death tolls — but still holds a lead over Labour in most opinion polls.

That sums up the dilemma for Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has struggled to break through to a largely indifferent public despite the many problems besetting Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration.

Starmer sought to change that with a speech at the party’s annual conference, arguing that Labour is “back in business” after a decade of election disappointments. He argued that his personal story — a working-class lad who went to law school and became a public prosecutor — made him a better leader than posh, blustering Johnson, whom he dismissed as “a trickster who has performed his one trick.”

“I don’t think Boris Johnson is a bad man,” Starmer said. “I think he is a trivial man. I think he’s a showman with nothing left to show.”

Labour has been out of office since 2010, a decade that has brought the country three Conservative prime ministers: David Cameron, Theresa May and Johnson.

Johnson’s Conservatives won a thumping 80-seat majority in Parliament in December 2019 by winning over voters in post-industrial northern England towns who had voted Labour for decades but feel neglected by successive governments.

Starmer wants to win them back. In his speech, he tackled many voters’ biggest concern about Labour — that the social democratic party will hike taxes and hobble the economy.

“Too often in the history of this party, our dream of the good society falls foul of the belief that we will not run a strong economy,” he said. “But you don’t get one...