Weekly Roundup - 10/02
Starmer’s U-turn on ￡28bn green spending pledge
Labour leader Keir Starmer has announced that his headline policy, the ￡28 billion a year ‘green’ spending package, will be dropped. He argued that because of Conservative economic mismanagement, he had no choice but to ditch the policy.
Despite this, he insisted that Labour was committed to ‘clean power by 2030’. The unions were not convinced, and the large left-wing campaign group Momentum called the U-turn a ‘capitulation to right-wing interests’.
The last 3 Conservative Prime Ministers have all attached the unfortunate label of ‘Captain Hindsight’ to Starmer. In 2020 he committed to nationalising the big 6 energy companies, but a year later denied that he had ever mentioned it. He said that the House of Lords would be abolished in the first term of a Labour government, but this pledge has since been dropped. In his leadership campaign, he committed to scrapping university tuition fees, but yet again this pledge has been dropped.
The nickname appears to be frighteningly accurate, as he constantly flip-flops on major policy pledges. Dropping this key promise will be highly damaging for Starmer, as the public are already puzzled on what he really stands for. Read more here.
Sunak’s PMQs controversy
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Rishi Sunak triggered a barrage of media controversy when pointing out Keir Starmer’s inability to define a woman. In response to Starmer’s question, Sunak listed a number of Labour U-turns, referencing an interview where Starmer said that ‘99.9% of women’ do not have a penis.
The context of Sunak’s comment prompted the backlash, as the mother of a recently murdered transgender teenager, Brianna Ghey, was present in the House of Commons gallery at the time. In response, Starmer said ‘Of all the weeks to say that, when Brianna’s mother is in the chamber. Shame’.
Despite many demands, Sunak has refused to apologise. He said that Labour was using the tragedy ‘to detract from the very separate and clear point’ about ‘Keir Starmer's proven track record of multiple U-turns on major policies’.
Starmer’s position on this issue is hard to fathom, and it is very clear within parliamentary rules that using a member of the public’s presence to intimidate a political opponent is strictly forbidden. As well as this, Mr Sunak and other Tory PMs have attacked Starmer several times before about his inability to define a woman. Starmer clearly used the tragic context to score cheap political points.
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Irish unification referendum by 2030?
Mary Lou McDonald, deputy leader of nationalist party Sinn Fein, has said that a referendum on the unification of Ireland could happen before 2030.
Following the restoration of the Northern Ireland executive last week, after 2 years of dormancy, Sinn Fein became the largest party in Belfast for the first time since power sharing started in 1998.
The Good Friday Agreement, signed in 1998, ending the troubles and establishing a power-sharing settlement, allows a referendum on unification if it appears that the population wants it. We could see a united Ireland in the next 6 years, or alternatively, more political gridlock in Belfast, if the DUP and other unionist groups attempt to prevent reunification.
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Sunak promises tax cuts
In an interview with the Times, the Prime Minister promised further tax cuts. He said that ‘economic conditions have improved, because the plan is working, you are starting to see mortgage rates come down and we have been able to cut taxes’.
It is widely expected that taxes will be cut further in the upcoming Spring Statement, but Sunak is cautious about committing to anything concrete at this point. He reiterated that taxes could only be cut ‘when it is responsible to do so’. The cautiousness could also be linked to warnings from the International Monetary Fund that tax cuts in the March budget could put public services at risk.
After spending and spending during Covid, tax levels rose to their highest ever peacetime levels in 2021, and have remained high ever since. Ordinary people have endured the burden of Tory economic mismanagement, and Hunt and Sunak’s latest promises of tax cuts seem a little too late.
While the 2% cut in national insurance was a positive step, it did little to outweigh 4 years of tax rises. More importantly, income tax thresholds are frozen until 2028, which means that as wages increase, it acts as a tax by stealth. Sunak’s promised tax cuts are a desperate attempt to overcome his polling deficit to Labour.
Sunak’s ￡1000 Rwanda bet with Piers Morgan
Sunak’s second long interview with Piers Morgan aired on Monday, and Morgan bet the PM ￡1,000 that no illegal migrants would be sent on planes to Rwanda before the general election.
Sunak shook hands with Morgan, but the following day back-tracked, saying he was surprised by the bet. The Rwanda migration policy is key to Sunak’s policy platform, and the government says that it aims for flights to take off by the spring. Read more on the Rwanda policy here.
As would be expected, the fact that Sunak initially accepted the bet drew criticism from political opposition. Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the Lib Dems, said that Sunak ‘does not even register the significance of that amount of money’, and declared that he was ‘out of touch’.
In the same interview, Sunak suggested that Labour leader Keir Starmer was a terrorist sympathiser. Starmer represented the Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation in court when he was a lawyer, which the government now considers a terrorist group.
Liz Truss and the ‘Popular' Conservatives
Liz Truss, the former Prime Minister, has launched the ‘Popular Conservatives’, which she says will ‘stand up for Conservative values’ and fight back against left-wing extremists that have taken over Britain’s institutions.
The group seeks to ‘challenge wokery’, ‘restore faith in democracy’, and reduce the power of independent institutions like the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
The group’s success will likely be tarnished by the legacy of Liz Truss. There is an immense irony that the least popular Prime Minister in history now heads a group calling themselves ‘Popular’ Conservatives. More significantly, it adds another faction within the Conservative party, and exacerbates the growing divisions. It certainly puts their election defeat beyond doubt and the future of the party in jeopardy. Read more here.
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