Sir Keir Starmer this morning declared that his government has accomplished more in seven weeks than the previous government had in seven years, as he delivered first keynote speech as prime minister.
Laying the groundwork for a much trailed “difficult” budget on October 30th, Sir Keir addressed 50 voters – people he met on the general election campaign trail this summer – in Downing Street’s ‘Rose Garden’.
Describing how the Downing Street rose garden has itself become a “symbol of the rot at the heart of government”, Starmer contrasted his government’s approach with what he described as “14 years of failure and populism” under the last government.
Referencing the need for tough decisions to tackle a £22 billion “black hole” in the public finances, the speech was a further step to prepare the country for a fiscal event that is expected to see further cuts in public spending and a host of tax rises.
“I will be honest with you, there is a budget coming in October, and it’s going to be painful,” he said.
In this sense, Starmer’s speech in the Downing Street rose garden may be seen to have a closer resonance with the rose garden news conference held by David Cameron and Nick Clegg at the start of the coalition government back in 2010, which ushered in a period of fiscal restraint and austerity.
In a segway to the recent riots, Sir Keir claimed that his government “have not just inherited an economic black hole, but a societal black hole.”
He said they exposed the “cracks in our foundations … weakened by a decade of division and decline”.
Sir Keir reflected on dealing with the riots of 2011, and how much harder it was to do this time around due to the lack of prison places – something he described as “about as fundamental failure as you can get”.
But his core message was warning the country that things would get worse before they got better, saying: “Just as when I responded to the riots, I’ll have to turn to the country and make big asks of you as well, to accept short term pain for long term good, the difficult trade offs for the genuine solution.”
Responding to today’s speech, Richard Fuller, the Chairman of the Conservative labelled it as “nothing but a performative speech to distract the public from the promises Starmer made, that he never had any intention of keeping”.
Attacking the underlying message that things are set to get worse before they can get better, the Conservative MP Andrew Bowie said this was the prime ministers “choice”, noting that, “He chose to reward striking unions with inflation busting deals”.
However, Sir Keir received the backing of the union movement. Paul Novak, the general secretary of the Trade Union Congress, described the situation that the government has inherited as a “rotten mess”, telling the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme: “I think that he is right to warn that there are no quick fixes”.
With a number of public sector workers receiving updated pay settlements from the government in the last month, Novak indicated that the government could expect continuing pay pressure from the union movement, saying: “I always want more for our members and to be ambitious on behalf of our members”.
With the government sticking to its phraseology around avoiding tax rises on “working people”, it is believed that they will increase a range of wider taxes in October.
Amongst others, these could potentially include the extension of national insurance or an equivalent tax on dividends, interest and rental income, a reform to council tax, and the equalising of capital gains tax with income tax.
It is also thought likely that the favourable tax regime on pensions will be adjusted, with a report from the Fabian Society today suggesting that as much as £10 billion a year could be raised through pension tax reforms.
Sir Keir is set to fly to Berlin later today for a meeting with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
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