ANDREW NEIL: Starmer has no blueprint for fixing Britain

Keir Starmer claims the condition of the nation is so utterly grim that it will take Labour ten years to ‘fix the foundations’ (the latest buzz phrase emanating from 10 Downing Street). Fair enough. There’s certainly a lot wrong with Britain, some of it the fault of the last Tory government, some of it common to most major western societies.

There’s only one rather formidable problem. Starmer has nothing remotely resembling a blueprint for fixing Britain. He did not offer one during the election. Nor did he unveil one during today’s remarks from the Downing Street Rose Garden, which was largely a regurgitation of his dullish stump speech delivered countless times during the campaign.

Somebody should tell him the election is over. Time to stop talking and start doing, even governing.

Exactly why he thought it necessary to address the nation with this set-piece speech is hard to discern. Of course it was designed to soften us up for the huge tax rises coming down the pike in the October 30 Budget, pinning the blame for them on the Tories. But we’re already braced for the extra taxes Labour denied it would ever introduce during the election, and we’ve long got the message that the Government wants us to believe it’s the fault of the Tories. All incoming governments blame their predecessors for being ‘forced’ to make painful early U-turns.

Sir Keir Starmer gives a speech in the Downing Street Rose Garden today

True, the Labour leader laid it on thick. This was Starmer the Undertaker, his nasal tones making him sound all the more miserable. Nobody could have mistaken him for a ray of sunshine.

He was speaking from the Rose Garden to remind us this was the venue for some of the many Downing Street lockdown parties held during Boris Johnson’s tenure. Labour has yet fully to grasp that it’s now in government if it’s still putting so much effort into deploying a garden to do down a rival political party that has already been reduced to a rump.

Johnson paid for the parties with his job as prime minister, and they probably marked the end of his political career, too. The point of dragging it all up again and banging on about it wasn’t clear. Most folk think Johnson got his just deserts and would rather put these terrible times behind them.

Except that Starmer still seems more comfortable in campaign mode than in governing the country. For a man who insisted the election was about the future, he has a remarkable capacity to bang on about the Tory past. He did not tell us one new thing that he has in store for us. But he trotted out all the old party political stuff in a brazen mixture of flannel, flummery and falsehood.

He claimed Labour had already achieved ‘more in seven weeks than the Tories in seven years’, an obvious nonsense. All Labour has achieved so far is to store up trouble on multiple fronts, from rising household energy bills to the risk of a wage-price spiral from inflation-busting public-sector pay deals.

His claim that he was being ‘tough’ with the unions is so farcical it barely deserves a derisory snort, given the huge pay settlements he has been doling out. Saying he had to scrap the winter fuel allowance for most pensioners to help repair the public finances is a downright untruth. The saving is going to pay for wage rises. Poor pensioners losing out so already-affluent workers, from junior doctors to train drivers, can be paid much more. Starmer Socialism in action.

Further fruits of his socialism were dangled in front of us. He promised that the state-owned GB Energy company he plans to form will ‘make money for taxpayers’. I wouldn’t hold your breath. GB Energy will invest in renewable energy sources that still require huge state subsidies, with pay-back in the dim and distant future.

Equally fatuous was his claim that Labour’s emphasis on renewables, under the control of a green zealot (Ed Miliband), meant we’d ‘no longer depend on foreign dictators’ for our oil and gas. By banning any new licences to exploit the remaining reserves of the North Sea, the Government is actually increasing our reliance on said dictators — because we will still need oil and gas for the foreseeable future.

Consultants and junior doctors demanded a pay rise during the strikes last year

GB Energy will gobble up resources for little, if any, return. Turning our backs on the North Sea means our own oil and gas will cease to be a source of government revenue. Yet the Government needs all the money it can get its hands on. It has inherited a tricky fiscal situation which projected a squeeze on public spending no government was likely to deliver. But yesterday he trotted out, yet again, the old canard that it was much worse than he’d ever imagined — a £22 billion black hole.

In fact, the severity of the fiscal straitjacket was well known during the election, Starmer made not a single proposal to do anything about it — then, once in power, made it much deeper by agreeing the public sector pay rises, which account for more than 40 per cent of the black hole he affects to have just discovered.

Yet this will be the excuse proffered when taxes are raised by at least £20 billion, perhaps £30 billion, in two months’ time. All manner of tax rises are being considered — all of which Labour claimed would not be necessary to get elected — from capital gains tax to reducing tax allowances on pension contributions, and many smaller tax rises in between. Even the triple lock on the state pension might not be safe. After all, if you’re brazen enough to take away the winter fuel payment from folks on just over £11,000 a year, the triple lock doesn’t look that secure in Labour’s brave new world.

At least Starmer had the grace not to tout his integrity yesterday and, since he’s now in the middle of several crony crises of his own, that was probably wise. But the whole premise of his ‘things are terrible and will get much worse before they get better’ shtick is based on deception and deceit.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is preparing for the October 30 Budget

The UK economy has many deep-seated problems that need to be tackled. But it’s hardly a basket case. It is, so far, the fastest-growing major economy this year. Inflation is only a tad over 2 per cent, shop prices are actually falling for the first time in nearly three years, unemployment is low and the pound is at a 29-month high against the dollar. Remember all that when Chancellor Rachel Reeves claims the economy is so dire that taxes have to soar. The more Starmer and Reeves talk us down so relentlessly, the more global investors look on us with decreased enthusiasm. Remember that, too, when you wonder who to believe.

Starmer began yesterday by insisting that higher economic growth was still at the heart of the Labour project. But that has already crashed and burned on take-off. Long-term investments, such as a new supercomputer for artificial intelligence at Edinburgh University, are being sacrificed to finance short-term expediency and popularity, such as public-sector pay rises.

Taxes are not about to be raised to invest in new world-class infrastructure, essential for higher growth. You will be stumping up to feed the insatiable appetite of Labour’s client base in the public sector. Nice work if you’re part of it, not so nice if you’re footing the bill. That rumbling you can hear emanating from your wallet or purse is the sound of money preparing to be dragooned to the Treasury’s coffers. You’re unlikely to see it again.