
Clueless: when Starmer was talking up Labour’s barely-scraped-together win in the Batley and Spen by-election, who knew that this gesture was his explanation of his policies – a shrug.
Isn’t it the job of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition Party to say what it would do if it was running the UK?
Here’s Labour’s Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury – also known as James Murray – taking nearly two minutes to avoid giving a straight answer to a straight question: whether Keir Starmer’s newly right-wing party would reinstate the £20/week Universal Credit uplift:
Labour refusing to commit to reinstate the Universal Credit uplift pic.twitter.com/UKtfGr5bLU
— black lives matter (@jrc1921) October 26, 2021
He said: “I’ve been really clear.. it’s really important to be clear about this.”
Then he said three times that Labour opposed the cut, but he wouldn’t say if the party would reinstate it. That’s shifty, not clear.
His problem is that Labour is now sympathetic to the miserly billionaires who store all their cash in offshore tax havens, and this means it has no tax option to fund the £6 billion/year that would be needed to make it viable.*
For the same reason, Labour can’t commit to a higher-than-inflation public sector pay rise after Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that he was ending the current pay freeze:
Labour refusing to commit to an above-inflation pay rise for public sector workers pic.twitter.com/GIalyeu3ab
— black lives matter (@jrc1921) October 26, 2021
Weak.
It makes Labour look like the Tories poorer little sister – unable to offer even a more imaginative alternative to big brother’s failed plans.
*We all know that the UK government can use the Bank of England to create as much money as it needs, but to be responsible it must prevent inflation via tax, right? Labour’s normal policy is to redistribute the nation’s funds (all money belongs to the government via the Bank of England, remember) by taxing the rich to pay for large-scale public services, but Keir Starmer wants to change that to a Conservative approach, and this means no cash for badly-needed social changes.
See:
“Let us be clear. The Government can create any amount of money they wish to shape a society which is good for all of us. If that money creation is inflationary, they can remove some of it from the rich through redistribution” @premnsikka in the House of Lords, last week. Spot on
— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) October 26, 2021
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