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Sadiq Khan has said he can understand why some former Labour voters are “flirting” with other parties in the run-up to May’s elections, but said that they may regret seeing a Green or Reform-led council in their areas.

Speaking to the Guardian at a youth centre, where he was announcing new funding for facilities for young people, the London mayor also cautioned Labour MPs against considering a challenge to Keir Starmer, saying such “navel gazing” would be punished by the electorate.

Members of all 32 London boroughs are being elected on 7 May, along with elections at other councils and mayoralties across England, and members of the Scottish and Welsh parliament, with Labour expected to perform very poorly.

Across London, a number of Labour councillors in inner boroughs are forecast to lose to the Greens or independents, with Reform hoping to make gains on the edges of the city.

Asked if he could understand why Labour may fare worse than usual in the capital, Khan said his call was for people “to vote on the track record of their local councils, rather than using it as a referendum on the imperfections of a Labour government”, saying that he accepted that Starmer and his team had not delivered “the progress Londoners would have liked to have seen”, despite progress on areas like child poverty and renters’ rights.

He went on: “I can understand why people may lend their vote to somebody else … All I would say, in a respectful way to Londoners flirting with protest is, actually, look at the record of the last 20 months compared to the previous 14 years.

“Will you get more delivery locally with a council that believes in protest, one that works with a Labour mayor and Labour government?”

Khan has been repeatedly targeted in the past by Donald Trump and his supporters, and has in return been a regular critic of the US president.

The mayor said Trump’s threat that Iran’s “whole civilisation will die” if Tehran did not meet US demands was “gratuitously offensive”. However, he refused to say whether or not he believed Trump was mentally fit to be president, saying this was not for him to decide.

He did, however, criticise the wider basis for attacks by the US and Israel. “I’m not sure what the justification for this war in Iran is from either Israel or the United States of America. I’m not sure what their criteria for success is. I’m not sure what the exit strategy is. I’m not sure what the legal basis is,” he said.

Khan backed Starmer’s decision to allow UK bases to be used by US forces, but only for defensive operations, saying the prime minister had “learned the right lessons” from UK involvement in the Iraq war and its aftermath.

“This prime minister is not getting involved in a war without a legal basis, without an exit strategy. This prime minister is not allowing airports base use for extraordinary rendition. This prime minister is operating within international law, but also being quite clear that we’ve got to be supporting our allies when it comes to defensive manoeuvres,” he said.

Asked what his message would be to Labour MPs considering a challenge to Starmer if the May elections went badly, Khan said that in political terms, compared with places like the US and France, the UK was “a sea of calm”.

He added: “But also it’s worth recognising what’s going on geopolitically, what’s going on in Ukraine, what’s going on in Iran, The idea for us to be perceived as navel gazing or being indulgent, I think, wouldn’t be rewarded by the electorate.”