LABOUR Prime Minister Keir Starmer will focus on growth and wealth creation, he told selected guests and media in the Downing Street rose garden yesterday morning.
He made it clear that the working class would experience pain, stating that the first Budget in October is ‘going to be painful’.
He added that he had no other choice and those with the ‘broadest shoulders should bear the heavier burden.
‘I will get a grip on the problems,’ he claimed, but change will not happen ‘overnight’.
He claimed the anti-immigrant riots ‘exposed the state of our country’ revealing a ‘deeply unhealthy society’ and cracks in its foundations ‘weakened by a decade of division and decline’ and ‘infected by a spiral of populism’, and he accused the Tories of offering the ‘snake oil of populism’.
Pledging to crack down on disorder he said he had checked if there were enough prison places to make sure ‘we could arrest, charge and prosecute’ people quickly.
Not having enough prison places is as ‘fundamental a failure as you can get’.
Laying more blame on the Tory government, he claimed: ‘We have not just inherited an economic black hole, but a societal black hole.’
Starmer said he’s been forced to make difficult choices already, including making the winter fuel payment means-tested, rather than universal, warning: ‘And there will be more of these decisions to come.’
He further warned the Labour Budget in October ‘is going to be painful’, repeating the mantra of facing a ‘£22bn black hole in the public finances’.
Starmer said it ‘won’t be business as usual’ when Parliament returns on Monday, after the Tories’ ‘14 years of rot’.
In questions from the media it was put to him that some will think he wasn’t honest during the election campaign about changes to things such as the winter fuel allowance. He was asked if he would say what tax rises he is considering for the upcoming Budget.
Claiming he was honest in the election campaign, and had not wanted to make changes to the winter fuel allowance but didn’t expect a £22bn black hole, saying the inheritance from the Tories is ‘dire’.
Asked what he would say to pensioners ‘who are not well off’ and ‘feel you are choosing to balance the books on their backs’, Starmer responded that the winter fuel allowance is ‘not a particularly well designed scheme, frankly’.
Asked if spending cuts are being considered, Starmer replied that he won’t ‘preempt the Chancellor’ in relation to the October Budget.
Starmer added national strikes were costing the country ‘a fortune’ – and they had to be resolved.
‘I frankly don’t want to take the tough decisions we’re going to have to take,’ he claimed to disbelief from the media.
