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Sir Keir Starmer speaks at a victory rally in the East Midlands alongside Claire Ward, who won the mayoralty there yesterday.

Ms Ward opens the meeting by thanking Labor activists in the region for the work “not only to secure our mayoral victory here in the East Midlands, but also to secure Labor here in the East Midlands, across all our seats to”.

She says the aim is to bring “power and funding from Westminster” to the region so that “our own priorities can be chosen”.

The new mayor introduces Sir Keir, who praises the “fantastic” and “really important victory”.

“You fought for this with a very, very positive campaign,” he told the gathered activists.

“You were rewarded with the confidence of voters in the East Midlands – a very important area for us.”

Declaring that the victory will go down in “history books”, the Labor leader says it will go down as “the day you convinced people that we are a changed Labor Party with a positive plan for taking the country to bring. cast their vote safely against the Labor cross”.

Sir Keir reiterates what he said yesterday, that the local election result is a message to the government that the public is “fed up with your division, your chaos and your failure”.

He declares: “I’m sorry. I don’t care which political party you support – if you leave your country in a worse state than when you found it fourteen years later, you don’t deserve to be in government a moment longer. .”

Today, he says, is the “beginning of turning the page” ahead of the general election, adding there is “a lot of work to do”.