Not even a month in, and the Labour Party has already been breaking pledges it made prior to the 4 July general election. No, not the promise about austerity; that one was obviously going to go as soon as Rachel Reeves got into 11 Downing Street. It’s another promise – but it’s a biggie, too.
Rachel Reeves: OMG you’ll NEVER guess what I’ve just found
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced on Monday 29 July that Labour has discovered a £20bn black hole in the country’s finances. Of course, it hadn’t just found it – we all knew about it back in March when the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) told us.
Specifically, its boss Paul Johnson said after the Tories’ Spring Budget that a possible scenario over the next few years would be that:
day-to-day spending on a range of public services outside of health, defence and education, will fall by something like £20 billion.
He summed up by saying:
If I am sceptical about Mr Hunt’s ability to stick to his current spending plans, I am at least that sceptical that Rachel Reeves will preside over deep cuts in public service spending.
But that didn’t stop duplicitous Reeves making out like SHE found it – and the Starmerroids trying to bat-away the truth:
🚨Jeremy Hunt: "Paul Johnson of the IFS said the state of public finances were apparent pre-election to anyone who cared to look."
Paul Johnson today, saying Conservative asylum plans "genuinely appear to have been unfunded." 👇 https://t.co/qwOk9kDXMe
— Best for Britain (@BestForBritain) July 29, 2024
Well, here it is from the horse’s mouth:
1 Last govt left public finances in bad state; 2 it does appear that funding for eg asylum was not provided
but 3 c. half of spending "hole" is public pay over which govt made a choice and where pressures were known; and 4 overall challenge for spending was known and remains
— Paul Johnson (@PJTheEconomist) July 29, 2024
Of course, we all remember Labour’s repeated bullshit during the election that there’d be ‘no austerity’:
During the election, Anas Sarwar accused the SNP of spreading “misinformation and lies” when we warned Labour’s damaging decision to copy Tory fiscal rules would mean around £18bn cuts or tax rises.
Today, Labour imposed billions of pounds of cuts to fill a £22bn black hole pic.twitter.com/KVNgrsoJ6t
— Tom French (@tomfrench85) July 29, 2024
During the election:
"No return to austerity" – Keir Starmer
“I don’t want to make any cuts to public spending" – Rachel Reeves
“I don’t accept there will be spending cuts… Read my lips: no austerity under Labour" – Anas Sarwar
25 days after the election: pic.twitter.com/h4ouRWtmyE
— Tom French (@tomfrench85) July 29, 2024
During the campaign, @RhunapIorwerth called for honesty from Labour about their spending plans.
But they kept promising no cuts, no austerity and no tax rises.
Today, Rachel Reeves will announce immediate cuts worth billions of pounds. pic.twitter.com/cG7rA1AUc8
— Plaid Cymru 🏴 (@Plaid_Cymru) July 29, 2024
Well now, there’s £3bn coming our way. However, the ‘no austerity’ pledge isn’t actually the one that Labour – specifically Wes ‘twunk on a ship’ Streeting – has broken.
To plug this ‘shocking and unexpected’ (lol) ‘black hole’, Reeves is clawing back money – not least £3bn via departmental austerity. As Canary columnist Rachael Swindon only just pointed out, Ukraine and its Nazis must be laughing all the way to the банку – as Starmer just pledged £3bn a year to them:
She’s also – with the help of the corporate media – hoodwinking people not aged 65 or over into believing another cut to the Winter Fuel Payment isn’t that bad:
So @SkyNews letting the word ‘some’ pensioners do some heavy lifting here.
Reality is more than 90% of old age pensioners will lose their winter fuel payment. 😡😡😡
But we’ve still got £3 billion a year for arms in Ukraine🤯 pic.twitter.com/VlJRtcWpV0— Kevin Pascoe #PoliticsOfFairness #Ex-Labour (@KevinPascoe) July 29, 2024
More on the Winter Fuel Payments scandal later from the Canary.
However, Reeves is also scrapping one of the ONLY half-decent things the Tories did in 14 years in office.
Social Care Cap, gone. Thanks, Labour.
As the Commons Library wrote:
a new £86,000 cap would be introduced on the amount anyone in England would have to spend on their personal care over their lifetime.
Only money spent by a person on meeting their personal care needs would count towards the cap. Spending on daily living costs would not be included. The cap would also not apply retrospectively; costs accrued before implementation would not count towards the cap.
Remember that? Well, Reeves has just shelved it. A government briefing note states:
Not proceeding with adult social care charging reforms. The previous government committed to introduce these in October 2025 but did not put money aside for them. The reforms are now impossible to deliver in full to previously announced timeframes.
Hang on. Didn’t Streeting say before the election that Labour DEFINITELY would not scrap this policy? Oh yes. He did:
Rachel Reeves says she will not take forward adult social care charging reform and the cap on care costs.
During the election campaign Wes Streeting said Labour were committed to the cap. 1/3 https://t.co/PAyrcggd7E pic.twitter.com/XBUfWEqJ8C— Charles Tallack (@CharlesTTHF) July 29, 2024
Now, let’s not get things twisted. The cap would only really benefit home owners or those with huge savings. It would also have not made a huge dent in the amount of money people pay out. This is because a large chunk of adult social care costs are daily living.
However, the cap would still have gone some way to stopping older people having to sell the entire value of their homes – y’know, the things Labour are now trying to get everyone to invest in – to pay for care costs.
We’re soooo fucked
So, Streeting lied – or as a Starmerroid like Alex Andreou might spin it, he ‘misspoke’, ‘went off-message’, or some other insipid buzz phrase made up by William who has a BTEC in PR and Comms and now works for Labour.
However, the health secretary’s bullshit sums up the mess we’re in. Labour is already presenting us with a vision of austerity worse than the Tories. This is because it will bring the cuts in hot-on-the-heels of over a decade of cuts already.
It’s obvious were the axe will fall:
- Benefits/DWP.
- Local authorities.
- Anything else where the poorest people are the biggest beneficiaries.
Starmer, Reeves, Streeting – in fact, the whole lot of them – are as manipulative as the Tories. But they’re worse – because we expect better from them.
Featured image via the Evening Standard – YouTube
