Keir Starmer was challenged to reverse all Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cuts today – including one that helps the worst-off.
The Labour leader this morning pledged to reinstate the 45p top rate of income tax paid by 600,000 of Britain’s richest people after it was axed by the Chancellor last Friday.
But speaking ahead of the start of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool he said he would keep an additional cut to the basic rate of income tax by a penny in the pound to 19p.
‘I’ve long made the argument that we should reduce the tax burden on working people,’ the party leader told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
The policy put him at odds with former Labour cabinet minister Andy Burnham. The mayor of Greater Manchester used a TV interview to suggest that the party should campaign ahead of the next election to reverse all the Tory tax cuts.
‘I don’t think it is the most targeted way of using the resources that we’ve got at this moment in time,’ he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
‘I would use it though to support people in different ways, so I’m not saying we wouldn’t put money in people’s pockets but if you keep that money, you are then able to target it to those who most need it because obviously if you cut the 20p rate, it benefits … it’s not as targeted a measure as doing other things such as supporting people who are at real risk and those are people on Universal Credit…… That’s my position, I don’t think it was a time for tax cuts. I think this is a time to support people through a crisis.’
Sir Keir‘s pledges came after he had accusing the Tories of ‘taking the p***’ out of voters with their massive tax-cutting mini-Budget.
Speaking ahead of the Labour Party Conference opening today the Opposition Leader insisted that the top rate paid by those earning more than £150,000 a year would return under his government.
The normally mild-mannered party leader lashed out after Friday’s ‘fiscal event’ saw income tax, corporation tax and stamp duty slashed along to stimulate economic growth.
The cap on bankers’ bonuses was also removed by Chancellor Kwarteng as he made the biggest change to the tax system in 50 years.
This morning Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham called on Labour to campaign to reverse the cuts to income tax ahead of the next election, telling Sky the Budget was a ”flagrant act of vandalism’.
The normally mild-mannered party leader had earlier lashed out after Friday’s ‘fiscal event’ saw income tax, corporation tax and stamp duty slashed to stimulate economic growth.
The cap on bankers’ bonuses was also removed by Chancellor Kwarteng as he made the biggest change to the tax system in 50 years.
But after he removed the 45p top rate of income tax paid by those earning £150,000 and over he was accused of helping only the super-wealthy at the expense of the rest.
He and Prime minister Liz Truss have defended their ‘trickle down’ approach, insisting the whole economy will benefit.
Sir Keir will open the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool today, and addressed activists last night.
He said the Government’s ‘driving ideology’ is now to ‘make the rich richer and do nothing for working people’.
‘If you earn a million pounds, yesterday, you got a £55,000 pounds tax cut, enough to pay for a nurse,’ he said.
‘It’s not trickle down, it’s taking the piss.’
Sir Keir Starmer branded the economic plans set out by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng as ‘wrongheaded’ and ‘risky’.
On the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Sir Keir said people were facing a ‘very difficult winter’ with supermarket customers ‘looking at the price of food and having to put it back down again’ because of soaring costs.
‘It’s on the back of 12 years of Tory failure. We’ve had an economy that hasn’t really grown very much for 12 years, we’ve had wages which haven’t really moved for 12 years, because they’ve taken the wrong decisions, they haven’t planned for the future.
‘And now we’ve got this decision on Friday to take a very risky approach to the future, driven by this ideology, this argument – wrongheaded argument in my view – that if you simply allow the rich to get richer, somehow that money will trickle down into the pockets of all the rest of us.’
Asked if Labour would reintroduce the 45 per cent rate, he told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme ‘Yes.’
‘I do not think that the choice to have tax cuts for those that are earning hundreds of thousands of pounds is the right choice when our economy is struggling the way it is, working people are struggling in the way they are… that is the wrong choice,’ he said.
‘I would reverse the decision that they made on Friday.’
Sir Keir will use the Labour conference to appeal to voters who are angry at ’12 years of failure’ under the Conservatives.
The Labour leader announced plans to end dependence on fossil fuels, with all the country’s electricity generated by renewable and nuclear power by 2030.
Labour claims the plan would save UK households a total of £93 billion over the rest of the decade – or an average saving of £475 for each household every year.
Sir Keir said the plan would also allow the UK to be free from being ‘exposed to dictators’ after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine led to the current spike in global gas prices.
The green energy revolution is being presented as an alternative path to growth after Friday’s mini-budget saw Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng set out a massive package of tax cuts in the hope of reviving a sluggish economy.
Sir Keir used speeches to activists on the eve of the Labour conference opening in Liverpool to denounce the ‘shower’ in Downing Street, who he accused of ‘taking the piss’ by offering tax cuts to the rich while giving less support to poorer households.
The Labour leader pledged to double the amount of onshore wind, triple solar and more than quadruple offshore wind power by 2030, according to details announced in The Observer ahead of the party’s annual conference.
The creation of a net zero carbon, self-sufficient electricity network would lead to permanently lower energy bills and independence from nations such as Russia, according to Labour.
The move could also create half a million jobs and make the UK the first country to have a zero-emission power system.
Sir Keir said: ‘The British people are sick and tired of rocketing energy bills and our energy system being exposed to dictators.
‘They want long-term solutions to cut bills for good.’
In a speech to activists, Sir Keir said the Chancellor’s admission of Tory economic failure would be hung ‘around their necks’ in the next election campaign.
He said: ‘There’s a change in the air. There’s an atmosphere, there’s a sense that Labour is ready to deliver.
‘And don’t we need change after 12 years of this shower, 12 years of failure under this government, wages stagnant for 10 years, public services on their knees.’
It is already clear that the Chancellor’s mini-budget on Friday will set the dividing lines for the next general election, with Sir Keir telling Labour supporters: ‘I didn’t agree with almost anything he said in that financial statement yesterday apart from his opening sentence, when he said there’s a ‘vicious cycle of stagnation’.
‘He’s right about that and it’s their vicious cycle of stagnation. That is the verdict on 12 years of Tory government, a vicious cycle of stagnation and we need to hang that around their necks.’
The former director of public prosecutions said it was good when ‘somebody who is caught red handed actually pleads guilty’.
The Labour leader’s relationship with union chiefs has been strained by his refusal to offer full-throated support for the wave of strikes triggered by the cost-of-living crisis.
But he insisted he would lead the ‘most pro-trade union Labour government you have ever seen’, promising a Green Paper on workplace rights within 100 days of an election victory.
The conference is vital for Sir Keir to present himself as an alternative prime minister to Ms Truss, with the next election expected in 2024.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, told the BBC the Labour leader should ‘be bolder’ in his economic policy and not ‘stand still’ in order to win power.
The conference will formally begin on Sunday, with tributes to the Queen and a rendition of the national anthem.
Mr Burnham said it is now ‘odds on’ that the UK will have a Labour government within the next two years as he spoke ahead of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool this week.
The Greater Manchester mayor told Sophy Ridge on Sky News: ‘I would see Labour this week come together.
‘Keir Starmer’s put us in a position where we can win the next election.
‘It’s the first conference, Sophy, since we last left government, where I think it’s odds on that there could be a Labour government within one or two years.
‘So we’re in that position and the time is now to draw battle lines with ourselves.
‘The Government’s drawn battle lines with us and with ordinary working people. Let’s unite and take the fight to them in Liverpool this week.’