With Left-wing policies raining down like molten lava, STEPHEN GLOVER argues no government in recent history has veered from its manifesto so quickly... In a few short weeks the devious heart of Starmer's party has been exposed
On the morning of July 5 Sir Keir Starmer stood outside No 10 and addressed the nation. Even flinty-hearted Tories may have been momentarily moved.
His short speech marked the beginning of a new age, and the end of the Conservatives' final undignified months in which incompetence, sleaziness and corruption combined in a fatal brew.
The new Prime Minister spoke of the need for 'trust', as he had also done earlier that morning, after being declared the runaway winner in his North London constituency.
Now he referred to a lack of trust as a 'wound', and declared that Labour would 'carry the responsibility of your trust, as we rebuild the country'.
Trust and integrity were catchwords not only of Labour's election campaign but also of Sir Keir's appeal to the British people from the days when Boris Johnson was prime minister. He has presented himself as a trustworthy, dependable politician devoted to public service, and in every way morally superior to his Tory counterparts.
Sir Keir Starmer has presented himself as a trustworthy, dependable politician devoted to public service, and in every way morally superior to his Tory counterparts, writes Stephen Glover
What do we think of his sales pitch now?
I ask because no government in recent history has in such a short period of time veered so far from the manifesto on which it was elected. Almost every policy announcement – and there have been many in six action-packed weeks – has either come as a complete surprise, or gone further than the electorate could reasonably have expected.
During the campaign Sir Keir adopted a super-cautious 'Ming vase strategy' characterised by a terror of revealing his real plans to voters, who might have been put off by the truth. As soon as July 5 passed, the Ming vase was allowed to crash to the floor. Labour emerged in its true colours.
The most abrupt departure from the party's painstakingly calculated approach has been over taxation. Labour insisted on the hustings that there wouldn't be any increase in income tax, National Insurance and VAT. It 'would not raise taxes on working people'.
On May 28, in her first speech of the campaign, Rachel Reeves, now Chancellor, was specific. She promised that if Labour won the election there would be 'no additional tax rises' beyond those she had already announced for private school fees and non-doms.
Now leaks abound that some taxes on capital gains, pensions, and inheritance, as well as stamp duty and council tax, will go up when Ms Reeves unveils her budget on October 30. Many of the casualties will certainly be 'working people'.
The Chancellor has admitted – as she did not during the campaign – that taxes will have to rise, telling a podcast on July 30: 'I think we will have to increase taxes in the Budget.'
Is all this in keeping with Sir Keir Starmer's undertaking to restore trust? Is it a demonstration of integrity to introduce draconian tax increases that were deliberately concealed in the campaign? The people will judge. Many may think it a cynical deception.
The dishonesty spreads far beyond taxation. Three weeks ago, Rachel Reeves announced the abolition of the winter fuel allowance for all but the very poorest pensioners. Nearly ten million people will be affected. The Chancellor believes the measure will save the Exchequer £1.4 billion a year, though some experts doubt this.
Nowhere in Labour's manifesto is there the slightest hint that pensioners would be targeted. Ms Reeves herself, admittedly seven years ago, pledged unequivocally to defend winter fuel payments.
And as recently as last November, her deputy at the Treasury, Darren Jones, was angry when it was falsely rumoured that the Conservative government was about to get rid of them. He tweeted that pensioners 'mustn't be forced to bear the brunt of Tory economic failure'.
Labour is already unloved and Starmer's approval ratings are plummeting
Labour's defence is that it hadn't planned to cut the winter fuel allowance – or indeed to raise taxes – until it opened the books and discovered a '£22billion black hole'. This is at best disingenuous. Labour was well aware of the state of the public finances before it took over, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out.
Moreover, nearly half of the so-called black hole is accounted for by Labour's agreeing outrageously large public-sector pay awards to curry favour with the trade unions. This week it made an unconditional offer of nearly 15 per cent to already well-paid train drivers, taking their average salary to nearly £70,000 a year.
Not that the Government's largesse has been rewarded. Hundreds of members of the train drivers' union, Aslef, are planning to walk out every Saturday between August 31 and November 9, and every Sunday from September 1 to November 10, a total of 22 days.
Labour's botched capitulation to Aslef came after junior doctors were offered a whopping 22 per cent increase over two years at the end of last month. Other public sector workers will get 5.5 per cent, two-and-a-half times the current rate of inflation.
The total cost of these generous awards will be £9.4 billion. That figure doesn't include GPs, who are next in line for a bumper payout.
Pensioners have meanwhile been deprived of their modest winter fuel allowance. Richer ones may not feel the loss but poorer ones certainly will. Labour sheds crocodile tears while shelling out huge amounts for public sector workers, which far surpass any commitments made in its manifesto or during the campaign.
And not only that. Despite the supposed black hole, Labour has been able to lay its hands on enormous sums for statist projects. It can find £11.6 billion for overseas climate aid and £8.3 billion for Great British Energy, a new investment body. All that can be said in mitigation is that these two splurges of public money are in the party's manifesto.
The alleged £22 billion black hole is part of Labour's biggest, and oft repeated, lie – namely, that the Tories 'crashed the economy'. Yet this week we have seen a spate of good economic news: unemployment down, inflation under control at 2.2 per cent, and growth in the second quarter (when the Tories were of course still in power) at a healthy 0.6 per cent.
Oh, Rishi Sunak, why did you call an election before these nuggets of good news could coalesce in the public mind? It must rank as one of the biggest political misjudgments of modern times. But that is another, tragic story.
Let's return to the list of Labour policies – deliberately kept out of the manifesto and not mentioned in the election campaign – that are now raining down on us like molten lava.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has announced an immediate ban on licensing North Sea oil and gas drilling. This goes much further than the manifesto's temperate undertaking to ensure 'a phased and responsible transition in the North Sea'.
Speaking of climate zealot Mr Miliband, he plans to blanket the country with wind turbines and solar farms, and councils will reportedly be forced to approve them under new rules whether they like it or not. Such compulsion hasn't been mentioned before.
In a few short weeks the devious heart of Starmer's supposedly trustworthy party has been graphically exposed, writes Stephen Glover
Over at Education, Bridget Phillipson has cancelled, again without Labour bothering to tell us in advance, the Higher Education (Free Speech) Act. This was a Conservative measure on the verge of becoming law that had been designed to safeguard open debate in universities.
By the way, Ms Phillipson has wasted no time in tearing up the school curriculum. Such an intention was admittedly buried in the party's manifesto, but the appointment of Professor Becky Francis, a celebrated Left-wing academic and Labour stalwart, to oversee the process is nonetheless a surprise.
And so it goes on. Rachel Reeves recently controversially announced that the Government is ditching the social care cap despite Health Secretary Wes Streeting saying during the campaign that it would go ahead. An £86,000 cap on the amount anyone in England has to spend on personal care over a lifetime will not now come into effect in October next year.
On illegal immigration, too, Labour hasn't been straight. During the campaign it didn't make clear its intention to fast-track plans to allow 90,000 migrants earmarked for deportation to Rwanda to claim asylum in the UK. It is estimated that at least two-thirds of these will be allowed to stay.
No one doubts that an incoming government in a democracy has every right to introduce whatever new laws it is able to get through Parliament. That right, though, is contingent on the new government being open and frank about its plans before an election. That's the function of a manifesto.
Previous administrations, Tory and Labour, have embraced policies not in their manifestos, as well as ignoring undertakings made in them. But seldom, if ever, have we seen such a rapid divergence between plan and execution, between what has been promised and what is being done.
In short, this is quickly becoming a far more Left-wing government, particularly in relation to the economy and taxes, than was intimated by a seemingly moderate, centrist Labour Party before election day.
I say 'seemingly' because, of course, the Mail and one or two other newspapers didn't accept during the campaign that Labour was as harmless and inoffensive as it pretended to be.
What is being sacrificed is trust and integrity – the very qualities that Sir Keir Starmer is preposterously claiming that he will uphold.
This turn of events shouldn't be surprising. When Sir Keir stood for the Labour leadership in 2020, he made ten pledges. They included higher income tax for the top five per cent of earners, the abolition of student fees and of Universal Credit, and the nationalisation of energy and water companies.
Sir Keir subsequently reneged on almost every undertaking he had made in order to be chosen as Labour leader. He misled the relatively small electorate of party members.
I don't believe he changed his mind; men of 57, as he then was, are usually settled in their beliefs. He told party members one thing – and then did another so as to make himself electorally acceptable to the British people.
As for Rachel Reeves, she hasn't been guilty of the same political somersaults as her leader. Indeed, she declined out of principle to serve in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet.
I had thought her an averagely honest politician until her pretence that a £22 billion black hole in the public finances had unexpectedly opened up, and it became clear that she intends to introduce tax rises that she ruled out only weeks ago.
The row over a book she published last year now takes on extra significance. More than 20 unattributed examples of other people's work were discovered. These included material lifted without attribution from Wikipedia, the Guardian newspaper and remarks made by Labour MP Hilary Benn. Trivial? Perhaps. But worthy of note.
The Tories became famous for their scandals and their sleaze, and ended up being thought dishonest by much of the nation. How depressing, then, that after only six weeks Labour should be establishing a reputation for duplicity.
In view of the many sleights of hand that have already taken place, there's no reason to take the word of Sir Keir when he claims to have no plan to take Britain back into the European Union or the single market. I simply don't trust him on this, or on much else.
The truth is that Labour – which, remember, won power with the smallest share of the vote in modern times and only about 20 per cent of popular support – has an unassailable majority because of the extraordinary quirks of our electoral system.
Enjoying as it does almost unprecedented supremacy, Labour assumes that it can govern as it wishes. With its triumphant hands on the levers of power, it won't mind if it is accused of political chicanery.
But the people do mind. There will quickly be huge disenchantment. Labour is already unloved. Sir Keir Starmer's approval ratings are plummeting.
And why should we be surprised? In a few short weeks the devious heart of his supposedly trustworthy party has been graphically exposed.
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