In a final step ahead of Thursday’s local elections, the Labor leader said voters were listening to “the dying sighs of an applauded government” trying to use “desperate attacks and diversions” to divert attention from growing inactivity. bills and tax increases. Writing to the Observer, Starmer said the government’s decision to increase national security in April was a policy of “deep stupidity and myopia” that was coming at the wrong time. It also launched a personal attack on both Johnson and Chancellor Risi Sunak. “During this election campaign, I have been asked again and again why the government seems so reluctant, so slow, so cowardly in responding to the issues facing the country,” he wrote. “Spending their time defending the defenseless, creating irrational distractions and fighting with each other left them no room to continue the jobs they had been elected for. It has made them incapable of governing. “We saw the miserable sight of a billionaire chancellor – immersed in allegations of his family’s tax affairs and taking advantage of companies operating outside Russia – saying that taking action to reduce people’s energy bills would be ‘foolish’. . We have heard the Prime Minister speak harshly about the crime while he faces allegations that his party ignored calls from the victim of a Tory MP who has now been convicted of pedophilia. “This madness can not continue.” Sunak has been sharply critical of the attacks on his wife, Aksata Merthi, who said she would pay all UK tax on foreign earnings in the future after proving she had a tax status abroad. She also has a stake in her father’s IT company, Infosys. The company announced last month that it was withdrawing from Russia. In an effort to regain lost voters who backed the leave, Starmer signaled the party’s efforts to move away from EU membership disputes. He said the government’s refusal to cut VAT on household energy bills meant they had lost. “A real benefit of Brexit that the whole country can get back.” He accused the Conservatives of wasting time with police, accusing them of violating lockdown rules by drinking packed food and a beer with staff at a Durham polling station while running in a run-off election. “In the absence of any idea of ​​where the country is going, what they want to achieve or how they will improve people’s lives, the Tories have resorted to desperate attacks and diversions,” he wrote. “Because they have nothing else to say. “The sound you can hear is the dying sighs of an applauding government.” Labor activists are trying to soften expectations that Labor could take Wandsworth’s iconic Tory council on Thursday, but are more confident they will make progress at Barnet. Party sources say he will fight to gain control of many councils because council seats were last vacated in 2018, when Labor had a strong result. Some are also preparing for council seat losses in areas where the party lost ground to the Tories in the last general election. However, they hope to show how the Labor vote is increasing from 2019, with plans to map out Thursday’s result in the main battlefield seats for the next general election. Starmer said the rise in national insurance was “both a betrayal of the promises made to the British public in the last election and one of the most self-destructive, damaging decisions a prime minister has made in recent times.” He again called on energy companies to help raise bills: “When the cabinet finally arrived at this week’s meeting, the big idea was some nonsense about having fewer MOTs. It would be laughable if it were not so tragic. “On the diluted benches of MPs behind him, I feel something much deeper: the dawn realization that the game is over.” Late Saturday, Johnson responded by saying that the choice was between “Labor and Liberal Democrats, who abolish your City Council tax to decide which statues to demolish, or the Conservatives, offering value for money and keeping local your priorities “. He accused the Labor Councils of increasing municipal taxes. “Conservative councils are the ones charging the lowest city tax anywhere in the country, in addition to our 150 150 tax deduction for more than 20 million households this month,” he said. “While in my old port of London, the poor people of Kingston are charged with the highest municipal tax in the capital by the ungrateful Liberal Democrats. “And a pity for the good people of Croydon, where Labor has bankrupted the council.”