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Keir Starmer has kicked off the most significant political week since the general election in July with a major speech drawing his budget dividing lines.
The autumn budget, the first to be delivered by a Labour chancellor in 15 years, is one of the most significant financial statements in recent history — and, according to Starmer today, by some distance the most difficult. Speaking in the West Midlands, the prime minister stressed that the country’s current challenges are far worse than those faced by Gordon Brown and George Osborne in 1997 and 2010 respectively.
“This is not 1997”, he said, “when the economy was decent but public services were on their knees. And it is not 2010 where public services were strong but the public finances were weak. We have to deal with both sides of that coin.”
He added, unapologetically: “I will defend our tough decisions all day long. It is the right thing for our country and it is the only way to get the investment that we need.”
Duly, Starmer attempted to cool some of the feverish speculation that surrounds Labour’s first budget, heavily hinting at tax rises to come but, also, at a glint of light at the end of the tunnel. The PM said the budget will mark “another step taken on the long, difficult but resolute path towards a Britain returned to the service of working people.”
Starmer continued: “Every decision that we have made, every decision that we will make in the future, will be made with working people in our mind’s eye.”
In terms of policy announcements, the PM stated that the £2 cap on bus fares will be replaced with a £3 cap at the budget — following widespread reports to that effect in recent days. (Starmer insisted this morning that “change must be felt”; this, of course, is the exact sort of measure that will be felt by the public — and it is unlikely, all else being equal, to endear the budget to them.)
But Starmer’s task today was primarily about framing the budget politically. Staring down his detractors, the prime minister insisted Labour would turn the page and close the book on Tory “chaos” and “decline”.
The raw politics of the budget is, in some senses, simple: Starmer wants to hone a ruthless and gripping narrative of Conservative mal-governance. But for this message to cut through, the prime minister must first reckon with the noisy, burgeoning assault on the budget’s less popular measures.
As such, Starmer insisted today that he will ignore the “populist chorus of easy answers” that, he suggested, the Conservatives found all too compelling in government. Indeed, to further expose the last administration’s alleged recklessness, the Treasury has called on the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the budget watchdog, to assess the transparency of the Conservatives’ spending plans.
Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, has reacted furiously to this news, writing in a letter to the OBR: “I do not believe publishing a review with criticisms of the main opposition party on the day of a budget is consistent with political impartiality.”
But Starmer today spoke of the “harsh light of fiscal reality”; politically, he will direct the OBR’s fiscal spotlight over the last Conservative government’s various pledges — to, first, justify the budget’s tough decisions and, second, further denigrate the Conservatives as reckless and unworthy of the responsibility power confers.
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