Starmer calls PM and chancellor ‘Chuckle Brothers of decline’ as he says budget is ‘bereft of ideas’
Sir Keir Starmer has attacked the budget as “the last desperate act of a party that has failed” as he branded Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak “the Chuckle Brothers of decline”.
The Labour leader criticised the chancellor for presiding over a recession and the highest tax burden in 70 years and accused Mr Hunt of using the budget to “give with one hand and take even more with the other”.
The chancellor announced a 2p cut to national insurance and abolished the current tax system for non-doms, which has been a Labour policy for some time.
Sir Keir called the move, which is expected to raise £2.7bn a year, a “short-term, cynical political gimmick” – adding there was not a “more obvious example of a government that is totally bereft of ideas”.
The Labour leader said Mr Hunt was a chancellor who “breezes into this chamber in a recession and tells the working people of this country that everything’s on track”.
Budget live: No rabbit out of the hat on income tax from chancellor
“Crisis? What crisis? Or as the captain of the Titanic and the former prime minister herself might have said, iceberg? What iceberg?” he joked.
“Smiling as the ship goes down, the Chuckle Brothers of decline, dreaming of Santa Monica or maybe just a quiet life in Surrey not having to self-fund his election,” he added.
Sir Keir said Britain deserved better than a “Rishi recession” and claimed the Tories had “maxed out the nation’s credit card”.
And calling for the government to confirm a May general election, he added: “It’s time to break the habit of 14 years – stop the dithering.”
Mr Hunt unveiled his budget – expected to be the last before the general election later this year – after speculation in the media pointed towards a possible cut in income tax to woo voters.
But the chancellor resisted calls from Tory MPs for income tax to be reduced and instead stuck to bringing down national insurance further from 10% to 8%.
Mr Hunt said that, combined with the reduction in national insurance in the autumn statement last year, the average worker would be £900 better off.
However, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have argued that frozen income tax thresholds effectively cancel out the benefit of the national insurance cut.
Analysis by Sky News has found that while the overall tax burden will be slightly lower in five years as a result of the NI cut, the effect of income tax thresholds being frozen rather than rising in line with inflation means it will still be at a near 70-year high of 37.1%.
The Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent public finances forecaster, has also said living standards will remain below 2019 levels until 2025-26.
In his statement responding to the budget, Sir Keir said his party would support the cuts to national insurance because it had “campaigned to lower the tax burden on working people for the whole parliament”.
But he accused Mr Sunak of breaking a promise he made when he was chancellor that the basic rate of income tax would be cut from 20p to 19p in 2024.
Elsewhere in his budget, the chancellor earmarked almost £6bn for the NHS with artificial intelligence set to be used to “cut form-filling for doctors” in a digitalisation drive – although Labour pointed out Mr Hunt promised to make the NHS paperless by 2018 when he was health secretary.
However, planned growth in day-to-day public sector spending will be maintained at 1% in real terms – a decision that has been criticised by unions.
Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union, said “decimating services to prioritise politically motivated tax cuts is not the right approach” while Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said the public “won’t be fooled”.
“Taxes overall remain at a record high and the promised growth is nowhere to be seen, despite what the chancellor would have everyone believe,” she said.
“There’s no budget giveaway for the lowest paid. They’ll be substantially worse off. And persistently punching public services in the face helps no one.”
There were signs of some discontent on the Tory benches after the Scottish Conservatives said the extension of the windfall tax on oil and gas was “deeply disappointing”.
And speaking in the Commons, former home secretary Priti Patel welcomed the cut to national insurance but urged the chancellor to go further in the future.
“Tax receipts have risen to over 1.1 trillion – we know what that all means in terms of getting that balance on taxation, which I maintain is very burdensome and we have to get those rates down.”
She added: “It will be interesting to see – is this a government that is going to bring national insurance down again, successively in future autumn statements too? That is something we should look at.”