Four bombshells from Starmer’s main speech – ‘painful’ Budget to winter gas

Keir Starmer warned the public today “things are worse than we ever imagined” in a major speech from the No10 rose garden.

The PM – now over halfway through his first 100 days in office – stressed the Government faced more difficult decisions in the lead up to October’s Budget. The gloomy message came as the new Labour Government faces intense anger over the decision to scrap universal winter fuel payments for pensioners last month.

Defending the move, Mr Starmer said that while he did not want to make the decision, it was one of the “tough actions” needed because of a £22 billion black hole in the public finances.

He also said he inherited a “societal black hole” exposed by recent rioting. But he also attempted to compare the clean-up of the riots by members of the public to the work of the new Government to “fix” the country.

He said: “The people who got together the morning after, all around the country, with their brooms, their shovels, their trowels and cleared up their community, they reminded us who we really are. I felt real pride in those people who cleaned up our streets, rebuilt the walls, repaired the damage.

“And I couldn’t help thinking about the obvious parallels, because imagine the pride we will feel as a nation when after the hard work of clearing up the mess is done, we have a country that we have built together, built to last, that belongs to every single one of us, and all of us have a stake in it.

Here The Mirror looks at some of the key points from Mr Starmer’s speech.

October’s Budget will be ‘painful’

In the most stark message of his address from No10 rose garden, the PM warned the country the Budget on October 30 will be “painful”. He did not specify any of the measures set to be announced by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves but hinted the wealthiest could be asked to pay more in taxes.

Grappling with a £22billion blackhole identified by the Government last month, he said: “There is a Budget coming in October and it’s going to be painful. We have no other choice, given the situation that we’re in. Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the heavier burden, and that’s why we’re cracking down on non-doms.”

In a frank message to voters, Mr Starmer said the country would have to “accept short term pain for long-term good, the difficult trade off for the genuine solution”.

He added: “And I know that after all that you have been through, that is a really big ask and really difficult to hear. That is not the position we should be in. It’s not the position I want to be in, but we have to end the politics of the easy answer, that solves nothing.”

But the PM did make clear his election manifesto vow not to hike taxes on “working people” – including income tax, VAT and national insurance – would stand.

More ‘difficult trade offs’ after axing winter fuel payments

Last month the Chancellor announced she would axe the winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners – a move that has provoked widespread anger. Instead the support will now be means-tested but the announcement by Ofgem last week that energy prices will increase in October has intensified the backlash.

Addressing the “difficult decision”, Mr Starmer said today: “I didn’t want to mean-test the winter fuel payment but it’s a choice we had to make. We have made that difficult decision to mend the public finances so everyone benefits in the long-term, including pensioners.

“Now that is a difficult trade off, and there will be more to come. I won’t shy away from making unpopular decisions now, if it’s the right thing for the country in the long-term, that’s what a government of service means.”

Shortly after his speech, the coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition Simon Francis, warned that scrapping winter fuel payments “has the potential to create a public health emergency which will actually create more pressure on the under-pressure NHS which the Prime Minister says he wants to fix”.

Tories borrowed £5billion more more than expected, PM claims

The Prime Minister said he was unaware until last week that the Tories had borrowed £5billion more than expected.

He said watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had also been caught off-guard by the figure. He claimed Rishi Sunak and co “hid” the dire state of the economy.

Mr Starmer said: “In the first few weeks, we discovered a 22 billion pound black hole in the public finances. And before anyone says ‘oh this is just performative or playing politics, let’s remember, the OBR did not know about it.”

He went on: “And they didn’t know – because the last government hid it. Even just last Wednesday we found out that – thanks to the last government’s recklessness – we borrowed almost £5billion more than the OBR expected in the last three months alone. That’s not performative – that’s fact.”

The OBR last week said it expected borrowing to be £4.7billion less than it was. Instead, figures released last week showed it had reached £51.4billion.

PM had to check prison capacity every day during summer riots

The PM said during his speech dealing with the scenes of rioting and looting that hit the country earlier this summer was “much harder” than in 2011. At the time, Mr Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions, and said today he had no doubt the courts could respond to the violent disorder over a decade ago.

But addressing the recent riots, he went on: “Every day of that disorder, literally every day, we had to check the precise number of prison places and where those places were to make sure we could arrest, charge and prosecute people quickly.”

Blasting the failures of the previous Conservative government, he went on: “Not having enough prison places is about as fundamental a failure as you can get and those people throwing rocks, torching cars, making threats, they didn’t just know the system was broken, they were betting on it, gaming it.

They thought ‘Ah, they’ll never arrest me and if they do, I won’t be prosecuted, and if I am, I won’t get much of a sentence’.

“They saw the cracks in our society after 14 years of failure and they exploited them. That’s what we’ve inherited. Not just an economic black hole, a societal black hole and that’s why we have to take action and do things differently.”