Labour living in glass houses over lying accusations

Since Tuesday nights televised party leaders debate on ITV, much of the talk has been about the repeated claim made by Rishi Sunak that Labour’s plans will cost every household an extra £2,000 a year. This figure is based partly on research prepared by HM Treasury, however the Civil Service department have sought to distance themselves from the debate, claiming that the funding shortfall that the Conservatives claim exists in Labour’s spending plans includes calculations from other sources and has is not entirely based on the calculations that they have prepared.

This has led to some hysterical reaction on social media from the left, including many of Starmer’s front bench. Left wing activist Matthew Stadlen has suggested that Rishi Sunak should stand down, on the basis that “Prime Ministers shouldn’t lie”; Green Party MP Caroline Lucas went a step further, proposing that Sunak should be investigated for being in breach of the ministerial code for “not upholding the [political impartiality of the civil service”; and The Guardian has reported that Sunak is now under investigation by the UK Statistics Authority over making ‘misleading’ claims about the economy.

This has led to a multitude of Labour party front benchers taking to X (formerly Twitter) to was lyrical about their disgust over the Prime Ministers lies. Deputy Leader Angela Rayner, shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, shadow Paymaster General Jonathan Ashworth, and Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips have all posted claims about Rishi Sunak’s “lies”.

The great irony here, is that many of those same Labour front benchers and Labour party activists have been gaslighting the public for months over a multitude of issues. Despite seeking to build an election campaign founded on the principles of honesty and integrity, the glass house that the Labour party live in is in imminent danger of collapse from the number of stones they are currently throwing.

Here we look at just a few examples of lies that members of the Labour party have told, which on reflection should act as a reminder to them to bite their collective tongue when considering calling the kettle black in future.

1.      Beers and Curry in Durham

In the midst of the Partygate hysteria in 2022, footage emerged of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his team enjoying a social evening whilst on the campaign trail in Durham. Starmer protested that this was a necessary work event, despite taking place at 10pm on a Friday night, with alcohol being visibly imbibed, and independent eye-witness accounts testifying that no work was being conducted by anyone present. To any impartial observer, it was clear that this was a prohibited social event taking place whilst COVID lockdown protocols were still in place, and providing clear evidence of the hypocrisy of the Labour party who had been so vehemently calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson for a number of weeks previous for precisely that same crime.

Add to that the inconsistencies in the recollections of events that came from Starmer when quizzed on the event. He claimed initially that Angela Rayner wasn’t there, until footage emerged proving her involvement, when suddenly he remembered that she was in fact there (she’s hardly a wallflower, how you would have failed to notice her presence is a mystery). Then he claimed they had no choice but to order curry to the constituency office, as the hotel they were staying at wasn’t serving food at that time. Which was fair enough… until the hotel confirmed that they were in fact serving food that evening.

Fortunately for Starmer, the police investigation was led by PC Joy Allen, a friend of Starmers’ and long-time Labour party campaigner, who had been appointed Labour Police and Crime Commissioner for Durham. Little surprise then that her investigation concluded that Starmer and co had no case to answer, leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of many to whom the sense of hypocrisy and corruption was inescapable.

2.      False claims about the economy

Throughout 2023 and 2024, many senior Labour party MPs, most notably shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, have been repeatedly gaslighting the public in respect of the Conservatives handling of the economy. You will have heard it before… the old “The Tories/Liz Truss crashed the economy” and “The Tories caused interest rates to rise”. Both claims are unsubstantiated, lack empirical support and are not based in any economic grounding.

Taking the claim that the Tories crashed the economy, a claim that Rachel Reeves loves to spout at any opportunity, there is a distinct lack of clarity over precisely what they mean by this. Reeves herself has never been willing to define exactly what “crashing the economy” means. I strongly suspect she doesn’t know, she just likes how it sounds to the public. It is in fact very difficult for an advanced western economy to “crash”, no matter how you interpret the definition of such.

One would presume that for a country’s entire economy to crash, this would entail a prolonged stock market plunge, sustained hyper-inflation, and a deep recession lasting for several quarters. However, none of these have happened in the UK.

Despite the significant financial pressures of COVID, the Tories managed to keep the UK economy out of recession altogether for the entirety of 2023. And whilst inflation did rise as high as 11%, this was driven largely by COVID and the war in Ukraine. What is more, an inflation rate of 11% is far from meeting the criteria of a hyper-inflationary economy. Whilst it is true that the markets did react negatively to Liz Truss’ mini-budget in November 2022, the subsequent fall in value of the £sterling and rise in fixed-term mortgage rates that it caused were both very temporary, with FX rates re-stabilising within 2 weeks.

Therefore, claims that the Tories “Crashed the economy” are not only false and easily debunked, but the mere notion has lacked clear definition and therefore cannot be proven to be true.

In addition, Labour repeatedly throughout 2023 made false and unsubstantiated claims about the UK economy being in decline, or growing slower than any other G7 country. These claims were baseless and often founded on outdated OBR forecasts that turned out to be inaccurate and failed to come to fruition. However, not once have Labour retracted their false claims about UK economic performance in the months and years following COVID, leaving their lies out in the public domain to purposefully mislead anyone who cares to read them.

Labour have lied remorselessly about the Tories management of the economy over the past 2 years, and they show no signs of tempering these tendencies as we approach the General Election.

3.      The Tories are responsible for interest rate rises

Linked to the previous point, Labour have repeatedly misled the public over the Government’s role in the rise of interest rates. They point again to the Liz Truss mini-budget in November 2022 as the trigger point for interest rate rises, and often refer to this as “the Tory mortgage penalty”. This is a clear attempt to mislead voters into believing that The Conservatives cannot be trusted with the economy, and are responsible for the mortgage rate rises that have taken place.

Above: UK interest rate changes since 2022 (source: bankofengland.co.uk)

They conveniently ignore the fact that interest rates in the UK first began to rise in December 2021, as the Bank of England began their quantitative easing strategy to combat rising inflation that had resulted from 18 months of printing money to pay for the nations COVID response measures, most notably the hideously expensive furlough scheme.

From Dec 2021, UK interest rates rose on average by ¼ of a % each month as the BoE rolled out its QE response, and by the time of the Truss budget in November 2022 rates had already risen from 0.25% to 3%. Following the mini-budget, blamed by Labour for being the cause of interest rate rises, rates continued to steadily rise at exactly the same rate as before, reaching 3.5% by the end of 2022 and eventually plateauing at 5.25% by August 2023. These rate rises would have occurred regardless of whether the truss budget had taken place or not, as they were linked to the BoE’s efforts to temper inflation, and were not driven specifically by Government fiscal policy.

In addition, Labour neglect to acknowledge the fact that both high inflation and subsequent interest rate rises have been experienced globally, with every other major European economy and the US seeing very similar patterns as in the UK over the same period.

So, the reality is that the Liz Truss mini-budget had very little impact on interest rates and, much like Labour’s claims of the Tories “crashing the economy”, these repeated lies are unfounded and unsubstantiated.

4.      False claims about Tory plans to abolish National Insurance

Whilst much of the scrutiny in recent days has centred on Rishi Sunak’s claims about Labour's £38billion funding black hole for their spending pledges (equating to £2,000 per household), the media have been strangely quiet about Labour's ironically similar spurious claims about gaps in the Tories costings.

In countering attacks from The Tories over Labour's sums, Starmer and Co have been claiming that the Conservative spending plans themselves present a deficit of some £58billion between tax revenues and the cost of implementing their policies. An alarming figure to say the least. However, this figure is based on a claim that the Conservatives have a policy to completely abolish National Insurance, which is simply not true.

Rishi Sunak has expressed an ambition to simplify the income tax system, and has stated a long-term desire to get rid of National Insurance to avoid working people suffering a double tax hit to their incomes. However, he has never said that this is an official Tory election policy, nor has he put a definitive timeframe on when this might be achievable.

Nevertheless, the £58bn figure that Labour have been quoting includes an incorrect assumption that the Tories will completely abolish National Insurance in the first year of the next parliament, with the value attributable to the lost tax revenues fully realised in year 1 of their calculations. This is however completely unfounded, Rishi Sunak has made no such commitment.

The cost of abolishing NI in totality would equate to £43bn per year in lost tax revenues, out of the £58bn total annual funding deficit that Labour claim exists in the Tories plans. In other words, the figures being quoted by Labour are at least 75% inaccurate.

Given the amount of noise that the Labour party have been making in the past few days about supposed inaccuracies in the Tories costings of Labour plans, it is ironic that their own costings of the Tories plans carry even more significant inaccuracies. You can fully expect the mainstream media to brush this under the carpet, however.

5.      Starmer abandoned every one of his leadership pledges

In the race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn in 2020, Sir Keir Starmer promised to maintain Labour's "radical values" and committed to many Corbyn-era policies. Fast forward three years, and in tone and content, the Labour leader has made significant changes to some of those promises, whilst others he has ditched altogether.

this has enraged those on the left of the party who claim Sir Keir won the leadership on false pretenses by promising a Corbyn-lite agenda to the more radical membership, before completely abandoning those principles and turning his back on the traditional working class left of his membership base, in a bid to woo more moderate voters. Hard-left mouthpieces like Owen Jones have raged in the months since, having been left politically homeless by Starmers abandonment of almost all Corbynite policies in much the same way that many hard-right Conservatives have been forced to turn to reform as the Tory party has moved ever more towards the centre ground since the Boris Johnson era.

Whilst it is politically sensible for Starmer to take a more centrist approach to policy making following the drubbing that Jeremy Corbyn suffered in 2019, nonetheless it paints a picture of a man who will say whatever it takes to secure support from voters, and has no problem abandoning his principles for political gain. Not the qualities you would expect to see from a man who has put “honesty and integrity” at the heart of his politics since assuming power of the party, and desperately ironic considering the criticism he is currently levelling at the PM for his supposed lack of truthfulness.

Honourable mention: Angela Rayner’s living arrangements

Without going back into the detail of the Angela Rayner Capital Gains scandal, it is worth reiterating that, despite HMRC and Stockport Council choosing not to investigate the Labour Deputy Leader further over claims she failed to declare and pay Capital gains Tax on the sale of her property in Vicarage Road, Stockport (you can read our detailed post on this topic here: https://www.hawker-gazette.com/post/police-drop-investigation-into-angela-rayner-council-house-sale), significant doubts remain regarding the honesty and integrity of Rayner due to this matter.

Many voters have failed to be convinced that Rayner lived apart from her husband and children for 5 years following her marriage I 2010, and that her Vicarage Road property was her principal residence for the entire period from the date she got married until 2015 when she sold the property. It is impossible to write a piece on Labour party dishonesty without mentioning the lies that Angela Rayner has told to avoid having to repay £18,000 of the Right-To-Buy discount that she benefitted from when purchasing the property, or the £2,500 of Capital gains Tax that she should have paid upon its sale. HMRC and Stockport Council may have concluded there was insufficient concrete evidence to prosecute her, but for many voters common sense prohibits the benefit of doubt from being so easily granted.