London, July 28: Britain’s new left-leaning government said Sunday that the nation is “broke and broken,” blaming the situation on its predecessors ahead of a major speech on the state of the public finances that is widely expected to lay the groundwork for higher taxes.
In a sweeping assessment three weeks after taking power, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office professed shock at the situation they inherited after 14 years of Conservative Party rule, while releasing a department-by-department analysis of the perceived failures of the previous government.
The critique comes a day before Treasury chief Rachel Reeves is expected to outline a 20-billion-pound shortfall in public finances during a speech to the House of Commons. “We will not shy away from being honest with the public about the reality of what we have inherited,” Pat McFadden, a senior member of the new Cabinet, said in a statement. “We are calling time on the false promises that British people have had to put up with and we will do what it takes to fix Britain.” Starmer’s Labour Party won a landslide election victory earlier this month following a campaign in which critics accused both major parties of a “conspiracy of silence” over the scale of the financial challenges facing the next government.
Labour pledged during the campaign that it wouldn’t raise taxes on “working people,” saying its policies would deliver faster economic growth and generate the additional revenue needed by the government. The Conservatives, meanwhile, promised further tax cuts in the autumn if they were returned to office. As proof that the previous government wasn’t honest about the challenges facing the country, Starmer’s office pointed to recent comments from former Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt confirming that he wouldn’t have been able to cut taxes this year if the Conservatives had been returned to power. Those comments came in an interview with the BBC in which Hunt also accused Labour of exaggerating the situation to justify raising taxes now that they’ve won the election.
