Sir Keir Starmer with Labour councillor Izzy Lenga

SIR Keir Starmer told Labour candidates not to let themselves get blamed for people’s rising bills as he helped them launch their council election campaign on Saturday.

And while the local party often insists it should only be about issues here in Camden and not international policy, the prime minister said he didn’t mind them telling people on the doorstep about the United States and Israel’s conflict with Iran.

As long as it was clear, that is, the UK would not be getting drawn in. “I know that what you will encounter on the doorstep is what all of us are encountering – it’s that people are really worried about the conflict in Iran,” he said.

“They know we are now facing a war on two fronts: the Ukrainian war – now four-plus years in – that’s had a huge impact, and now this Iran conflict.

“People are really worried when they see on the screens the missiles, the strikes, the casualties, the infrastructure that’s being damaged and they know the dangers of escalating this.

“And they know deep down in their hearts that this is going to impact on them and they are worried about that. We have to reassure them.”

Georgia Gould with Nanouche Umeadi

While big vocal opponents of Brexit, Labour organisers have tried to steer clear of discussion of foreign policy in recent years amid tensions over Israel and Palestine.

Some canvassers have privately said they are not 100 per cent clear what should and shouldn’t be said when the issue comes up on the doorstep as the May 7 polls get closer.

Councillors have said that focus should be given to debates on policies they have direct control over.

Now in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s assault on Iran and the punishing fuel prices coming out of the conflict, Mr Starmer said it had to be made clear that the government was protecting people with a three-month reduction in energy bills.

“That will be part of what we do on the doorstep,” he said.

“I think the energy bills is thing that people are most worried about because they can see what is happening with the price of oil and they are translating that into what’s going to happen in their household.”

Sir Keir Starmer gets a hug from Livia Paggi, a new candidate in Holborn and Covent Garden

He said polling showed that the majority of people did not know that Labour had made a move to help cut bills until June.

It is not clear at this stage what the price will hit when colder months return later in the year.

The Holborn and St Pancras MP was the not-so-surprise guest as the Labour election team on his home turf began the local campaign run-in.

This was a large get-together in the hall of the London Irish Centre in Camden Town on Saturday morning.

The party scored a landslide majority at the 2022 local elections – and has only once lost control of the council in the past 55 years.

But national poll ratings have been poor and there have been suggestions that residents disappointed by Labour’s performance since returning to government will look to give the prime minister a bloody nose in what has repeatedly been called “Starmer’s backyard”.

The party is facing challenges from the opposition Liberal Democrats and a surging Green Party, as well as potential independent candidates ready to put Gaza – and a call for divestment of council pension fund deposits in arms companies – at the centre of their campaigns.

Labour councillor Rishi Madlani gets a snap of Sir Keir Starmer during his speech

The Tories are hoping to make gains in Primrose Hill while the Reform factor is an unknown in this part of north London, even if it has hardly revealed itself as a force before.

Mr Starmer said that candidates should stand on the council’s “brilliant track record”.

Asked by the New Journal after his speech whether Labour candidates were under greater pressure this time around as their performance at the polls could have a direct influence on his future in Downing Street, he said: “Obviously what the national government is doing matters to residents, and I think across Camden the vast majority of residents will be saying ‘we don’t want to get dragged into a war with Iran’. I think they are with the government on that.

“What the national government does matters but there’s a really good set of candidates here. Camden is a good, well run council – people understand that and therefore it’s important to give them the chance to continue to do that. They go in with their own track record.”

Hampstead and Highgate MP Tulip Siddiq at the launch

Other speakers at the launch included Hampstead and Highgate MP Tulip Siddiq; the Kilburn councillor Nanouche Umeadi, who talked about being a councillor while raising two children on her own; and Livia Paggi, one of the new candidates in Holborn and Covent Garden.

Georgia Gould, who was the leader of the local party, at the last borough­wide elections sat in the audience.

She left halfway through the term to become an MP in Queen’s Park and Maida Vale.