Badenoch hits out at ‘shameful and damaging’ Starmer administration
The pub tax U-turn shows Sir Keir Starmer’s Government is in chaos, with Labour backbenchers calling the shots, Kemi Badenoch has said.
The Conservative leader said the Prime Minister and Chancellor Rachel Reeves had lost credibility, and were incapable of showing strong leadership at a time of global turmoil.
The promised U-turn over the tax hike facing pubs followed pressure from Labour backbenchers and is the latest policy aimed at raising tax or saving money to be ditched or watered down in the face of opposition.
Mrs Badenoch said: “The pubs business rates mess, coming so soon after the family farm tax U-turn, points to a Government and a Chancellor that is all at sea.
“As happened with last year’s winter fuel allowance and welfare cuts U-turns, these chaotic reversals have blown a big hole in Rachel Reeves’ numbers and have rendered November’s budget all but pointless.”
The Office for Budget Responsibility will deliver its next assessment of the public finances in March.
Mrs Badenoch said Sir Keir and Ms Reeves lacked the “backbone” to take tough decisions.
She said: “Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ credibility is shot. They are now operating entirely at the mercy of their own backbenchers.
“Anything the Government announces is liable to be junked soon after.
“This is a shameful and damaging way to run our country, especially when we need leadership with a backbone to take the tough decisions on today’s security challenges.”
Recent opinion polls have suggested the Tories have overtaken Labour but are still a long way behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Mrs Badenoch said: “The Conservatives are doing the hard work in Opposition to build serious plans, drawing on the depth of talent and experience in the shadow cabinet and Conservative Party.
“Only we will have the plans and the team to deliver them, so we can get Britain working again.”
A Labour spokeswoman said: “Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives crashed the economy, hammering people’s mortgages – and working people are still paying the price.
“Kemi Badenoch should be apologising to the British people for the state they left our economy in, through sky-high interest rates, rocketing energy costs and higher prices at the shops.
“The Prime Minister and Chancellor have put our country back on a stable footing and this is the year Britain turns the corner.
“Whether it is through the new breakfast club at their kids’ school, the new neighbourhood officers on their streets, their mortgage rates continuing to fall or NHS waiting lists coming down, Labour is delivering the change the British people voted for.”
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Says the party that did immense damage to the UK and big part of ripping us out of the EU and causing multi billions annually in damage to the UK and put the liar and cheat Johnson in power and put Truss in power.
She will remove my rights and let loose racist thugs on the UK streets and cause me untold financial harm.
I am disappointed in Starmer but by heck he is still orders of magnitude better that the Cons and farage.
There is a saying in Cymraeg which is “brawd mygu yw tagu” or in English “choking is the brother of suffocation” which basically suggests they are all as incompetent as each other and couldn’t run a tap let alone the UK. They are only tip-top at rubbishing each other and feathering their own nests and sod everyone else.
Her party normalised u-turns with some sources claiming 142 under the Johnson regime.
It’s much easier to announce a rule change and see who complains before tweaking it, than spend months running consultations and focus groups only to find the carefully designed proposals still trigger outrage.
‘Shameful and damaging’ from the person who has, I believe, declined to condemn the shooting dead of an innocent woman in Minneapolis but who still advocates having the same lawless masked murdering thugs on the streets of Britain. Now tell me what is ‘shameful and damaging’.