Lies and hypocrisy: Labour's first 30 days in office

With events following the Southport child murders on 29th July dominating both the news coverage and the focus of political debate over the past fortnight, you would be forgiven for overlooking a number of other significant failings of the newly-elected Starmer government that have taken place since the Labour party won a landslide General Election victory on 4th July.

Despite claims from the left of “the grown-ups being back in charge”, the immediate aftermath of the election have seen a staggering amount of hypocrisy and political controversy, with Winter fuel payments for pensioners being ruthlessly withdrawn and a doubling-down on Labour’s manifesto pledge to place taxes on education, being used to fuel unaffordable inflation-busting pay rises for public sector workers and to pledge £11.6bn in foreign aid to help other countries with the effects of climate change.

But we don’t believe that Labour should get a free pass for the failings that have not garnered the same amount of press coverage, simply because they have been overshadowed by other events and even greater failure of leadership.

So take a look at some shining examples of the honesty and integrity that Starmer claimed his party would bring back to British politics:

Chancellor disingenuous over public finances claim

New Chancellor Rachel Reeves has made the entirely predictable claim that, now she has had an opportunity to “properly review” the state of the nation’s finances, things are worse than she feared. Surprise, surprise… despite stating repeatedly during the election campaign that she knew full well what she would be inheriting, many observers predicted that she would use the old “oh, things are worse than I thought” line to justify tax rises or spending cuts once her party had lied their way into power.

She has pinned a tweet to her Twitter bio that states “We are under no illusion as to the scale of the challenge we have inherited from the Conservatives after more than a decade of low growth and a £22 billion black hole in the public finances.”

And yet, figures published by the OBR this week show that Britain has the fastest growing economy in the G7 this year, expanding more than the US and twice as fast as France. The UK economy grew by 0.6% in the three months to June, following 0.7% growth in the first three months of the year. The UK outperformed France, Germany and Italy in the second quarter of 2024, and has outpaced every other major advanced economy so far this year. And this was achieved due to Conservative economic policy.

The Tories plan was working, the figures don’t lie. But Rachel Reeves does. Her claims about inheriting a car crash economy are not supported by the independent figures. And yet, since Labour have taken charge and announced inflation-busting pay rises for public sector workers, the latest inflation figures show a rise for the first time in over a year, jumping from 2% to 2.2%.

Of course, despite being repeatedly challenged on her claims by the Tories in the run up to the election, Labour did not want to own up to their planned tax rises, for fear of losing votes. Indeed, prior to the election, Reeves admitted that, unlike previous incoming Chancellors, she would be unable to arrive at the Treasury and claim she had looked inside the books and realised things were even worse than she looked from the outside, giving a flimsy excuse for immediate tax rises or spending cuts. Reeves was quoted as saying:

“We’ve got the OBR now... We know things are in a pretty bad state, you don’t need to win an election to find that out.”

Given the OBR’s detailed and public scrutiny of public finances, providing Reeves with the most in-depth insight ever into what she would be inheriting, it is not credible for her to claim that a £20bn shortfall exists of which she was not sighted.

Reeves has decided that a Treasury audit of public finances would prove the ideal vehicle to make these disingenuous claims about “black holes” in the finances, believing that the public would be insufficiently educated on macro-economics to challenge her assertions. However, she has been called out by multiple economic experts and Treasury officials for her insincerity on the matter.

Of the £20bn that she claims represents the public finance “black hole”, it must also be noted that £10bn of this is attributable to the unfunded above-inflation pay rises that she has chosen to award to public sector workers. Whilst I have some sympathy for her position, given this aligns to the recommendations of the Pay Review Board, a body that the previous Government also relied on to base public sector pay awards, this nonetheless still represents the fallout of a choice that she has made as Chancellor, and not the economic position she inherited.

No-one has forced her to award inflation-busting pay rises to public sector workers. She could have said that the public finances don’t allow for implementation of the PRB’s recommendations. In agreeing to 5.5% wage rises for teachers and NHS staff, she has added to the problem and is now trying to pass it off as a legacy of the outgoing Tory Government.

It simply does not wash, especially when in the past week her Labour Government has committed a further £3bn to support the war in Ukraine, and Labour Energy Minister Ed Milliband has pledged an astonishing £11.6bn in overseas aid to other countries to help with the impacts of climate change.

Treasury Minister breaks MP rules by failing to declare rental income

In July, Tulip Siddiq, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, was reported to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over a breach of MP rules, for failing to declare income from a London rental property for over a year. The rules state that such interests must be declared within 28 days, a rule that Ms Siddiq would have been fully aware of. Previously, when Conservative MPs have been found to be at fault of such breaches, they have been met with howls of corruption from the Labour benches and the left-wing media alike, accompanied by repeated calls for resignations.

Interestingly how, now that the shoe is on the other foot, the story has been conspicuously absent from the pages of The Guardian and The Mirror. And where Keir Starmer would previously have described such a breach as a dereliction of integrity in public office, he now describes such disregard for MP rules as “an administrative oversight”. Hypocrisy laid bare in the first days of this Labour government… are any of us surprised?

David Lammy charters £10,000 per hour private for visit to Israel

They couldn’t even make it a month before being hoisted by their own petard over this one!

For years the Labour party has accused the Tories of having “utter disregard” for public finances by taking private jets for foreign overseas trips. Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has been particularly vocal on this on multiple occasions. When Liz Truss travelled via private jet for a state visit to Australia in 2022 in her capacity as Foreign Secretary, Rayner branded it as “obscene”, “brazen” and a “disgusting waste” of taxpayer money for “vanity and comfort”.

But it turns out that David Lammy is the latest Labour frontbencher to hire a luxury private jet, despite the party promising to clamp down on ministers’ flights.

The Mail on Sunday exposed the hypocrisy of the new Foreign Secretary, revealing that Lammy chartered a Bombardier Global jet, which costs upwards of £10,000 per hour, for his two-day visit to Israel last week. This came just a week after Mr Lammy used the Government’s private Airbus A321 to fly from London to Germany, then to Poland and on to Sweden.

Sir Keir Starmer came under fire for flying in an Airbus to watch England in the Euros final on July 14. He and Defence Secretary John Healey also reportedly took separate RAF flights to Washington DC which are likely to have cost more than £60,000 each.

Now, I am personally of the opinion that senior ministers should be able to use private jets for important overseas trips. In particular the remit of the Foreign Secretary requires regular travel, often at short notice, and when coupled with the busy schedule that the post demands, it is understandably not always realistic that they are able to fit to commercial travel timetables. There is also the legitimate question of safety when it comes to high-profile members of Government, such as the PM.

However, the fact that Labour have been SO vocal on so many occasions of former Tory ministers for doing so, means that their blatant hypocrisy MUST be called out! This behaviour does nothing to restore faith in the integrity or honesty of our British political class, and certainly contradicts the values that Keir Starmer claims his “changed” Labour party is built on.

I am also still waiting for an acceptable justification for the Prime Minister using a private jet to attend the final of the European Championships earlier this month. It is difficult to comprehend precisely what urgent state business he would have been conducting during the match?!

Chancellor shafts struggling pensioners

Another entry from new Chancellor Rachel Reeves, again related to the supposed “black hole” that she (to the surprise of no-one) has claimed to have discovered since coming into the position. In order to balance the books, Reeves has decided to target pensioners, by limiting the Winter Fuel Allowance to only those on means-tested benefits, whereas previously it was a universal benefit paid to all above retirement age.

To be fair to the Chancellor, many people including myself, have long been of the opinion that this should not be a universal benefit. There are a lot of people in this country above retirement age who simply do not need the £300 every year that the Government gives them towards their energy bills. A form of means testing in order to cut the cost, on the face of it, is certainly a sensible suggestion, and entirely justifiable given the state of the public finances at this time.

However, to restrict it to only those receiving universal credit or pension credits is taking far too extreme an approach. The result will be a huge financial blow to millions of pensioners who sit just above the threshold for benefits payments, but who are genuinely struggling to make ends meet.

Money saving guru martin Lewis was quick to criticise the policy, stating on his social media pages:

“The targeting of Winter Fuel payments is too narrow with the Winter we have coming. Pensioners are already due to get less as this will be the first time since Winter 2022 they haven’t got the £300 extra Winter fuel cost-of-living top-up…

Many pensioners eke out the £100 to £300 Winter Fuel payments to allow them to keep some heating on through the cold months. While there’s an argument for ending its universality…

it’s being squeezed to too narrow a group… yet again, those just above the threshold will be hardest hit.”

The warning signs were there pre-election… we were warned that, when Labour made a pledge not to raise taxes on working people, they had backed themselves into a corner that would inevitably result in them going after pensioners. The expectation at least was that they would target “rich” pensioners… however, this policy will hit the poorest the most, something that is traditionally not very Labour-like!

It has led to widespread anger amongst the British public, with many life-long Labour voters stating they would not vote for this Government again, and branding Labour the “new nasty party”. As one disabled pensioner, who admitted to having voted Labour all of their life when calling into Carol Vorderman’s LBC show put it… “even the Tories didn’t do this!”

This could very well be the first of the thousand cuts that kill this Labour Government over the course of the next 5 years. They have put themselves in a difficult position with this one… the policy has proved immediately unpopular with the electorate, and drawn significant criticism from poverty and age-related charities. If they ignore the criticism and stick to their guns, they will deliver savings for the Treasury, but at the expense of votes at the next election.

However, if they U-turn on this, their first real policy announcement, then it paves the way for 5 years of intense media pressure any time they announce a policy. Much like we saw with the ousting of Boris Johnson following ‘Partygate’, once the media get a sniff that they can influence Government policy-making, they are like a dog with a bone.

So not only might this policy prove a significant early misstep for this Labour Government, but it may well lead to even more tricky times ahead.

Sadiq Khan uses “exploitative” zero-hours contracts

One of the first things that the new Labour government has done as part of the King’s state opening of Parliament address, and in keeping with their manifesto promise, is to ban the use of zero-hours contracts. These arrangements have been described as “exploitative” in publicly-available Labour party documents.

However, astonishingly it turns out that the office of the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has been employing staff on zero hours contracts for some time.

A freedom of information request submitted by Harry Phibbs of ‘Conservative Home’, revealed the following information:

“When explicitly referring to the definition of zero-hour contracts above, there are currently 54 people whose terms align with this definition.”

The newly-elected Mayor of London has already been facing severe criticism following leaked memos regarding his intention to extend the congestion charge to electric vehicles, despite his repeated claims that the London ULEZ zone is intended to reduce emissions and not simply as a money-making exercise, as many of us have claimed.

And now it transpires that his office engages in the very employment practices that his own party have branded as exploitative, and are intending to ban.

Possibly a lesson for Labour to ensure that their own house is in order before legislating against others.

Labour cabinet ‘NIMBY’ hypocrisy

In an article published by the Telegraph on 12th July, it was revealed that as many as half of the Labour cabinet have been on record opposing housing developments in their own constituencies. It comes as Labour have announced bold plans to place severe restrictions on the ability of locals to block house building, and a greater move towards centralisation of housing decisions, as the Labour Government seeks ways to hit their unrealistic targets of 1.5 million new homes over the next parliament.

It transpires that, whilst a large number of Labour shadow ministers spent years criticising the previous Conservative government for not building enough houses, they were concurrently working behind the scenes to actively block the governments attempts to do that very thing.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and Foreign Secretary David Lammy, are among key members of Keir Starmers’ top team who complained to councils over new homes. (This is not the first time that both Lammy and Rayner have been called out for hypocrisy in this article!).

Other prominent Labour cabinet ministers who have previously voiced objections to house building in their constituencies include Lisa Nandy, Liz Kendall, Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper.

As reported by The Telegraph, a Conservative Party spokesman said: “Rachel Reeves has promised to rip up planning rules so Labour can concrete over the countryside. But she has clearly forgotten the hypocrisy of her cabinet colleagues, including herself.”

It is clear that Labour understand the concerns of local councils and residents when large-scale housing plans are announced, as most of them have actively campaigned against them in the recent past. And yet, now they are in power, they intend to run roughshod over the concerns of the constituents they have previously promised to protect, by implementing planning reforms that will make locals powerless to oppose new developments.