Rishi Sunak’s abandonment of “triple lock” protection for the state pension should be the trigger for an early general election, a senior member of Labour’s shadow cabinet has said.
Since coming to power on Tuesday, Mr Sunak has rowed back on predecessor Liz Truss’s pledge to keep the triple lock, which requires pensions to rise by the highest of inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent.
Campaigners for the elderly have voiced concern after Downing Street made clear that the protection – dating back to David Cameron’s time in office – was “on the table” for chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s 17 November autumn statement on the government’s tax and spending plans.
Breaking the inflation link would deliver £3bn-£5bn towards filling the £40bn black hole in the nation’s finances, but is regarded as a betrayal by campaigners.
Now Wes Streeting has said that ditching this central promise of the last Conservative manifesto would fundamentally undermine Mr Sunak’s claim to a mandate from the 2019 general election.
“I’m not sure where this government will land on the triple lock,” Mr Streeting told a Westminster lunch.
“But it is another example of a Conservative Party that seems willing to break its manifesto commitments.
“And if the argument that Conservatives are making is ‘The things we promised in our last manifesto can no longer be afforded because we crashed the economy’, then I think they have a responsibility to go back to the voters and ask them for permission for the plan that they want to pursue in order to fix the damage they’ve done.
“We will happily compare our plan with this and let the people decide.”
His comments came as the number of signatures on The Independent’s petition calling for an early election passed 450,000.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has led calls for the country to be enabled to make its decision on who should run the government in the wake of the second change in prime minister within the space of two months.
And Mr Streeting today said that Mr Sunak’s departure from Boris Johnson’s 2019 programme left the prime minister with no mandate for changes he wants to introduce.
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“The 2019 manifesto they stood on can’t be delivered,” said the shadow health secretary. “They are breaking promises left, right and centre.
“So our new prime minister has no mandate for the programme he intends to carry out.
“And if he wants to fix the mess his party has created, he should at least have the decency to ask the British people for their permission. The public deserve their say in a general election.”
Mr Streeting said that Mr Sunak’s promise to “fix” the mistakes made by Ms Truss at least showed he was aware of “the enormity of the brand damage that the chaos of the last 12 months has inflicted on the Conservative Party”.
But he said that any chance he had of persuading voters he could reverse the problems created by his predecessors was undermined by his selection of a cabinet made up of faces familiar from the Johnson and Truss administrations.
“His choices … revealed he is too weak to reverse it,” said Mr Streeting. “Instead of putting together a fresh team, drawing on the brightest talents of the Conservative ranks, he engaged in grubby deals to appease factions of his own party.
“Party first, country second. What other explanation can there be for the return of a home secretary [Suella Braverman] who resigned as a security risk?”
Mr Streeting brushed off suggestions that Mr Sunak will be able to restore public faith in the Conservatives as competent stewards of the country’s finances, after the disarray of recent months.
“Rishi Sunak is one of many conservative chancellors that have saddled our country with more than a decade of failed economic policies that – as they say themselves – have delivered high taxes and low growth,” he said.
“Rishi Sunak can’t tackle the cost of living crisis because he has fuelled the cost of living crisis.
“I don’t care that Rishi Sunak was privately educated or that he’s hugely wealthy.
“I do care that he’s dangerously out of touch, making decisions about people whose lives he has never lived and whose lives he will never understand – decisions that are making them poorer, not richer.
“Ideological dogma may have crashed the economy with the mini-Budget. But more than a decade of failed Conservative economic policies have left working people paying the price.
“And now Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are talking about fixing the mess their party created and about the difficult choices they will face in doing so. But these choices are nowhere near as difficult as those facing the British people experiencing higher mortgage costs, higher bills and higher taxes.”
– It is a simple and fundamental principle that the government derives its democratic legitimacy from the people. The future of the country must not be decided by plotting and U-turns at Westminster; it must be decided by the people in a general election. And for this reason The Independent is calling for an election to be held. Have your say and sign our election petition by clicking here.
