Sir Keir Starmer refused to rule out manifesto-busting tax rises for working people 12 times in an interview, even as said it was “important that politicians stick to their word”.
During a trip to the G20 summit in South Africa, the prime minister declined to recommit to manifesto pledges ahead of next week’s Budget, widely seen as make-or-break for his government.
The chancellor Rachel Reeves is widely expected to hike taxes on Wednesday as she scrambles to fill a multi-billion-pound black hole in the nation’s finances.
Asked whether leaders should follow through on their pledges, Sir Keir told Sky News: “Yes, it is important that politicians stick to their word.”
He added that “we’ve obviously got big decisions to make in the Budget”.
But he evaded questions on whether Labour’s pre-election pledge to voters would be broken, despite multiple follow-ups. These included whether income tax thresholds will be frozen, meaning inflation pushes more and more people into paying higher rates.
Earlier this week the Labour refused to rule out a freeze on income tax thresholds.
The Tories have said extending the freeze would breach Labour’s manifesto promise not to hit working people with extra tax.
Ms Reeves has been warned that a combination of higher borrowing, sluggish economic growth and Labour U-turns means she must raise taxes or tear up her flagship borrowing rules in the Budget, potentially risking market turmoil.
In his interview, Sir Keir pointed to years of austerity, a “botched” Brexit deal, the pandemic and the Ukraine war.
Earlier, Ms Reeves warned Britain had to take “a different path” on the economy and could not continue to “muddle through” in an interview with The Times Magazine.
On Friday, the government suffered another blow as official figures showed government borrowing was £3bn higher in October than the Office for Budget Responsibility had expected.
In her interview, Ms Reeves said: “Borrowing is too high, but you can’t cut it overnight. Public services are a mess, but we haven’t got loads of money to throw at them and we have to use what we’ve got well.
“We can’t just carry on like this and muddle through. We have to make some decisions to get on a different path.”
But she also hit out at her critics, saying she was “sick of people mansplaining how to be chancellor to me”.
Earlier this week Stephen Millard, the deputy director for macroeconomics at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, told The Independent that the positives of extending the freeze on thresholds would include that it “raises revenue, though later on in the parliament rather than now, and widens the tax base, negating, to a degree, the need for a rise in the basic rate”.
However, he said any freeze could break the party’s manifesto pledge and hit middle-income households, which will be more likely to have to pay tax at the higher rate in the future.
“And it may not calm markets, given it’s a promise about future taxes, which could always be gone back on, rather than a rise in taxes today,” he warned.
