Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said North Shropshire was not one of his target seats after the party finished third in last week's by-election.

In a Times Radio interview, Sir Keir signalled that he would not enter into formal pacts with rival parties to defeat the Conservatives, but indicated he would target resources at seats most likely to vote Labour.

And he acknowledged that North Shropshire had not been among his "targets" as he plots a route to winning the next General Election. The party finished third with 3,686 – 9.7% of the vote – as the Lib Dems achieved an electoral victory last week.

The Liberal Democrats also picked up a by-election win from the Tories in Chesham and Amersham during 2021, and are considered more likely to present a threat to Mr Johnson’s party in some of its southern heartlands than Labour.

Sir Keir said: “I do think we should have a Labour candidate that people can vote for wherever they live. And depriving them of that is not the right thing to do.”

But “given the size of the task that we face, given my utter determination that we are going to get this over the line at the next general election, I am very clear as to what our target seats are”.

Sir Keir did not visit North Shropshire during the election campaign, although his deputy Angela Rayner was present in support of Oswestry-based candidate Ben Wood in the run-up to last Thursday's poll.

The Labour leader said the likes of North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham were “not on my list of target seats” and “I have to sort of take an approach, given the situation we’re in, which is very clearly focused on the route for the Labour Party to win power at the next general election”.

Sir Keir said he had three aims when he became Labour leader – change the party, “expose” the Government and present the Opposition as a credible alternative administration.

He added: “I don’t think after the defeat in 2019 we could look at the electorate and say ‘what’s wrong with you’, we needed to look at our party and say ‘what’s wrong with us’.”

Sir Keir said he wanted to “expose the Government for what it really is” and that was now happening “ably assisted by the Government itself”.

The Labour leader said “hard work” remained to persuade voters that his party was a government-in-waiting but “I am absolutely determined that we can do whatever is necessary between now and the next election”.

He said it was “nonsense” to say that he was not very political, adding: “To have closed the gap from -25 (in the polls) to being ahead of the Government in under two years after the worst defeat in 2019 I think shows a bit of politics.”

Sir Keir’s personal criticism of the Prime Minister – “I think he’s dishonest” – came as former premier Mr Cameron questioned Mr Johnson’s approach to the media.

Mr Cameron told Sky News: “Well, Boris has always been able to get away with things that mere mortals can’t seem to.”