'We are not going down the road of austerity,' Starmer vows after winter fuel payment cuts and freebies row
21 September 2024, 22:17 | Updated: 21 September 2024, 22:28
Sir Keir Starmer has promised to protect public services from future austerity cuts as he made a bid to move on from fury over winter fuel payments cuts and an ongoing row over donations.
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After arriving at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, the Prime Minister said his Government was not “going down the road of austerity”, like that pursued by David Cameron’s administration.
Sir Keir gave a series of interviews to Labour-friendly newspapers where he admitted the "damage" of cuts to public services. His comments may signal that the Treasury has found new ways to free up funds after Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the cuts were needed to address a "£22bn black hole in the public finances".
He also acknowledged the damaging impact of the row over clothing donations he had received, and of internal fighting within his Downing Street operation.
Speaking to the Sunday Mirror on the eve of the conference, Sir Keir said austerity-era cuts did a “huge amount of damage to our public services”.
"We are still feeling the damage even now. So we are not going down the road of austerity,” he said.
He also sought to counter suggestions he only offered doom and gloom since coming to power.
Sir Keir told The Observer newspaper that he now intends to set out a more positive vision for the future under Labour.
“I want to answer the ‘why’ question as well as the ‘what’ question. We do need to say why and explain and set out and describe the better Britain that this ladders up to,” he told the newspaper.
An early conference signal of this optimistic intent came as he told a Saturday night reception in Liverpool that he wanted his Government to be compared with Clement Attlee’s transformational post-war administration.
The 1945 Labour government set up the NHS and helped rebuild the UK after the devastation of the Second World War.
But in the present, Sir Keir faces lingering anger over the decision to strip winter fuel payments from about 10 million pensioners, with union calls at the conference to reverse the move.
Labour’s largest union backer, Unite the Union, is pushing for changes at the conference, including reversing the cuts to the winter fuel allowance.
The union is also calling on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to introduce a wealth tax on the top 1 per cent, an “excess profits” tax, change capital gains tax rates to match income tax, and make investment income liable to national insurance.
With the conference taking place against a backdrop of rising tensions in the Middle East, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on Liverpool’s waterfront to coincide with Sir Keir’s arrival at the event on Saturday.
There is also consternation among the Labour movement about his and his wife Lady Victoria Starmer’s acceptance of gifts, including clothing, from prominent Labour donor and peer Lord Alli.
Sir Keir, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner have said they will not accept such donations in the future.
The announcement came after donations “in kind” listed in the publicly available registers of interest for both Ms Reeves and Ms Rayner were also disclosed to be for clothing.
The row has drawn criticism from Labour’s political opponents, who have contrasted the lavish gifts with the Government’s decision to limit the winter fuel payment for pensioners.
Sir Keir dismissed suggestions the row would hurt his popularity in the long-run however, and said voters would judge him on his record of delivery.“I think in the end, that is what people will judge me on,” he told The Mirror.
Sir Keir is also grappling with an internal row within his No 10 operation, after reports of tensions between chief of staff Sue Gray and senior officials.
The leaked disclosure that Ms Gray is paid £170,000, some £3,000 more than the Prime Minister, has added to the rumours of behind-the-scenes difficulties in No 10.
He acknowledged the destabilising nature of the row, telling The Observer: “It is my job to do something about that and I accept that responsibility. And that just damages everybody.”
