‘You can’t do everything at same time’ says minister as pressure mounts on Labour
A Cabinet minister has said that “you can’t do everything at the same time” as Labour came under pressure to reverse its fortunes after Reform UK’s success in the local elections.
Jonathan Reynolds has said ministers “want to go faster” on implementing changes after a group of MPs across former Labour heartlands said Sir Keir Starmer has to “break the disconnect” between Labour and the Red Wall.
The Business Secretary told Good Morning Britain that he understands “where people are coming from” and has heard concerns from his own constituents.
U-turn
The Prime Minister has been facing calls to U-turn on his decision to strip winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners in the wake of last week’s election losses.
Mr Reynolds said: “You’ve got to be clear, sometimes you can’t do everything at the same time, sometimes there are difficult decisions, and means-testing winter fuel payments to the people who need it most, making sure every pensioner is better-off by having the triple lock in place, I think is the right decision between those two key policy areas.”
In last week’s contests Labour lost the previously safe Runcorn and Helsby constituency in a by-election and almost 200 councillors as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK made sweeping gains.
Mr Reynolds told the ITV programme: “We want to go faster, and we will, but we understand where people are coming from and I say again, those were a tough set of election results, I’m not shying away from that at all.”
Rethink
Downing Street said on Tuesday “there will not be a change to the Government’s policy” on winter fuel after Welsh First Minister Baroness Eluned Morgan was among those calling for a “rethink”.
The decision last July to restrict the winter fuel payment to the poorest pensioners was intended to save around £1.5 billion a year, with more than nine million people who would have previously been eligible losing out.
Meanwhile, the Red Wall Labour group told the Prime Minister that “responding to the issues raised by our constituents, including on winter fuel, isn’t weak, it takes us to a position of strength”.
They called on the Government to “break away from Treasury orthodoxy otherwise we will never get the investment we desperately need”.
It comes as new YouGov data suggests Labour are polling at their lowest level since the era of Jeremy Corbyn.
The latest voting intention figures show Reform on 29%, with Labour lagging behind on 22% and the Conservatives on 17%.
According to YouGov, this is the lowest the party has polled since October 2019 under Mr Corbyn, as Mr Farage’s party continue to out-poll the Government.
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You can’t do everything at the same time, unless it’s approving new infrastructure for London and its commuter belt, like Heathrow expansion, a new railway for Oxbridge and another tunnel under the Thames at a cost of six Newport bypasses.
Of which only the Oxford -Cambridge is paid for by the government, but this will easily be paid back within 20 years through economic growth.
We could do the same in Wales- encourage private investment or increase taxes to pay for new infrastructure?
The challenge the government faces is that it really has very little funding available for new investment projects as it has so little headroom. In fact, every government department is facing cuts over the next 3 years. ‘Governance by bond market’ is probably 5 to 10 years
According to reports central government only “hopes” private finance will pay for “some” of the construction of the new Thames tunnel. But it will be tolled, which is something a Newport bypass could do to avoid taking money out of healthcare if the roads socialists weren’t so opposed.
Fair points. The private finance has now has (or almost has) been agreed.
My main point is these projects are non-brainers to support if the treasury doesn’t have to find money – remember it currently has a 75bn per year black hole and spending 10 bn per year on interest repayments alone!
In Wales, we always want Westminster to come to our rescue. The South West, North east, Scotland etc aren’t any better treated. Sometimes to make these projects work, we need to develop them ourselves. This happens in many European countries (local taxes on people and businesses(
No, it’s the same old contrived arguments to keep London growing at the expense of everyone else. No other modern government works this way. It’s damaging to the UK state because the nations and regions are underperforming, meaning they cost more in public services and contribute less in GDP, while the capital overheats meaning it’s less productive and less able to grow than it should be. The argument about recouping the investment more quickly being good for the taxpayer ignores the wider impact of prioritising one part of the economy. It’s economic madness not to spread it around. If London… Read more »
But no one knows what you are doing. That is the problem.