Starmer refuses to rule out further tax rises when challenged at PMQs to repeat what Reeves told CBI – UK politics live

During PMQs Keir Starmer accused Kemi Badenoch of having made unfunded spending commitments worth £6.7bn during her time as Tory leader.

Here is the table from Labour justifying the figure (which the party did brief to the Mirror at the weekend). Labour has identified commitments worth a total of £6bn a year, and added another £700m for the cost of restarting the Rwanda scheme.

Commenting on PMQs, Ellie Reeves, the Labour party chair, said:

Kemi Badenoch has again been unable to explain whether she would reverse changes to employer NICs that pay for Labour’s investment in the NHS and education. Would she cut the funding for hospitals and schools which she claims to back?

The opposition are all over the place. Nothing constructive, no new ideas. Just complaints and nothing to say about what they would do – all while running up an unfunded promises wish list of nearly £7bn in just three weeks. Completely unserious.

Here is the news story PA Media has filed about the Starmer/Badenoch exchanges at PMQs.

Keir Starmer has sidestepped calls to repeat chancellor Rachel Reeves’ pledge of no more borrowing or tax rises following the budget.

The prime minister said he was “not going to write the next five years of budgets” at the despatch box in the House of Commons when challenged by Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch.

In a series of tetchy exchanges between the pair, Badenoch also pressed Starmer on whether he would continue with a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030.

Her question came after Vauxhall-owner Stellantis said it would close its van-making plant in Luton, putting 1,100 jobs at risk, amid what it called the “stringent” UK zero-emission vehicle mandate.

Starmer also dismissed a petition calling for a general election after Badenoch raised it and suggested he should resign.

Speaking at PMQs, the Tory leader said: “At the CBI conference on Monday, the chancellor said – and I quote – ‘I’m clear, I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes’. I know that telling the truth to this house is important to the prime minister, so will he repeat his chancellor’s pledge now?”

Starmer replied: “We set out our position at the budget, which was just set out. We’re fixing the foundations. We’re dealing with the £22bn black hole that they left. I’m not going to write the next five years of budgets here at this despatch box but we said we wouldn’t hit the payslips of working people. We’ve passed the budget. We’ve invested in the future, and we’ve kept that promise.”

Badenoch claimed that Sir Keir was “not fixing any foundations, he’s making everything worse”, before adding: “The whole house would have heard him refuse to repeat the chancellor’s pledge, a pledge as worthless as the manifesto promises that he’s talking about.”

Speaking ahead of PMQs, Reeves said she had “wiped the slate clean on the economic and fiscal mismanagement of the previous government”. She told broadcasters: “We have put our public finances on a firm footing and we have properly funded our public services, and our public services now need to live within the means that we have set them for this parliament.”

Elsewhere at PMQs, Starmer defended the government’s approach to business and claimed the Tories “really haven’t got a clue what they’re doing” when it comes to policies.

Badenoch countered: “To know what Conservatives would do, he should resign and find out. Until then, I’m the one asking the questions. There’s a petition out there, two million people asking him to go.”

The Tory leader claimed deputy prime minister Angela Rayner’s employment rights legislation will “stop businesses hiring”.

Starmer, in his reply, said: “She talks about a petition, we had a massive petition on July 4 in this country. We spent years taking our party from a party of protest to a party of government, they are hurtling in the opposite direction.”

Badenoch described the response as “nonsense” and appeared to use the concerns of a biscuit company to aim a jibe at Rayner. She said: “Following his budget, the head of McVitie’s has said that it has been harder to understand what the case for investment in the UK is. So while the prime minister has been hobnobbing in Brazil, businesses have been struggling to digest his budget. Isn’t it the case that the employment rights bill shows that it is not only the ginger nut that is causing him problems?”

John Swinney urges Scotland’s opposition parties to put public first when MSPs vote on budget

John Swinney

John Swinney has warned opposition parties to put the public first as his minority government struggles to put together sufficient support ahead of next Wednesday’s Scottish budget.

In a keynote speech in Edinburgh this morning, the first minister said:

In a parliament of minorities, no political party is a bystander in the budget process – if there is no collaboration then there is no budget bill.

The SNP leader, who is now governing as a minority after his predecessor Humza Yousaf ripped up the partnership with the Scottish Greens in April, added: “We can choose to be mired in party politics or we can choose to put first and foremost our duty to the people we represent.”

With Labour unlikely to take up Swinney’s call for collaboration, the Scottish Greens and Liberal Democrats could get the budget bill over the line. The Greens want an end to the controversial council tax freeze, which is hitting struggling councils, while the Lib Dems want a commitment to stop spending on independence – unlikely to fly with the pro-independence Greens.

Swinney told reporters afterwards that he was ready for an early election if necessary, but warned opposition leaders that blocking the budget would cause “disruption” to public services.

Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said the Vauxhall factory closure in Luton would be followed by more job losses.

Responding to Jonathan Reynolds’ Commons statement (see 1.49pm), Griffith said:

The closure of the Luton plant, I fear, is just a downpayment on jobs that will be lost under this government’s relentless attacks on industry, its neglect of the realities of business, and its failure to meet its promise not to raise taxes.

The government owes it to the plant’s workers to at least be honest, this decision is the direct result of a government policy that is simply unworkable for industry. Stellantis told us as much when they said that this decision was made in the context of the zero emissions mandate.

The government’s policy on zero emission vehicles is a jobs killer. They say they have been talking since July, so why today, this panicked U-turn when it’s already too late. Under the last government, we acknowledged that the previous vehicle mandate was too stringent. We took the decision to push this back, recognising the impact that it would have on industry.

Reynolds replied:

That is the single most dishonest statement I’ve ever heard.

The simple truth was that it was too late after 14 years of failure to be able to put this right. So I just have to say to him with all politeness, he is out of touch with industry, he is out of touch with workers, he’s even out of touch with what the previous Conservative government did.

Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, told MPs that the government had done everything it could to stop Vauxhall closing its van factory in Luton. In a Commons statement, he said:

I found out about the challenges at this site just 10 days after the election, the global CEO told us he felt extremely frustrated by the lack of action from the previous government.

We have done everything we possibly can to prevent this closure from happening. The secretary of state for Transport and I met Stellantis [the company that owns Vauxhall] many times over the summer and again on Tuesday morning to discuss the situation and the acute pressures the company is facing.

We have worked hard to find a solution that would support the business and ensure people kept their jobs, and we confirmed in writing we were willing to consider any solution put forward. However, despite our best efforts, we have been forced to accept that this is ultimately a commercial decision by Stellantis as they respond to wider challenges within the sector.

Reynolds said the decision to close the factory did not mean the company was leaving the UK.

Whilst this announcement is not what we wanted nor what we worked towards, we must not mischaracterise this. It categorically does not signal a retreat by Stellantis from the UK. The plans announced by the company will also see them investing £50 million as they consolidate manufacturing at their Ellesmere Port plant.

And he confirmed the government is “fast-tracking” a consultation on ending the sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.

We will be shortly fast tracking a consultation on our manifesto commitment to end the sales of new purely petrol and diesel cars by 2030, but we will use that consultation to engage with industry on the previous government’s ZEV [zero-emission vehicles] transition mandate and the flexibilities contained within it, and we will welcome on board their feedback as we move forwards.

Let’s start with two rightwing commentators and what they posted on social media before PMQs. Both suggested this was some sort of make-or-break moment for Kemi Badenoch. This was Dan Hodges, the Mail on Sunday commentator

Important PMQs for Kemi Badenoch today. Needs to start properly landing some blows.

And this was from Patrick O’Flynn.

Can Kemi Badenoch take apart Keir Starmer at PMQs today? She needs a big performance after he dodged the occasion last week. Time to expose the many deficiencies of this Govt. This is probably Kemi’s final chance to make a strong early impression on the British public.

Flynn is a former political editor of the Daily Express who went on to become a Ukip MEP.

And did Kemi Badenoch take Keir Starmer apart? No, not at all. This was her third PMQs and, although none of them have hit disaster territory, they have all been relatively underwhelming. She has been getting good write-ups in the loyalist Tory papers, but beyond that she is not really leaving her mark. There are various reasons, some of which were on display today. In no particular order:

1) She does not seem to have worked out what line she wants to land. The leader of the opposition has six questions, but only one of them is likely to get clipped for the evening news, and it should be obvious which it is. With Badenoch, it isn’t.

2) She tries to do too much. Any PM will have lines they can use to respond to the first one or two questions on a difficult topic. Often an opposition leader does best when they persist, with intelligent, probing follow-ups. But we have not seen any of that from Badenoch, who does not seem to be strategising, and instead is just relying on six pre-scripted questions.

3) She goes over the top. She can’t resist ‘everything is terrible’ hyperbole, which might work in an Express leader conference, but much of the time is inherently implausible. She also conflates her ‘everything is broken’ under Labour thesis with her ‘everything is broken because Whitehall needs reform” thesis, which got an outing today (see 12.15pm), but is actually a different argument. Does it persuade the average floating voter? If it does, they are probably more likely to vote Reform UK.

Another example of overkill today was Badenoch’s decision to call for Starmer’s resignation, citing a bonkers online petition (“There’s a petition out there, two million people asking him to go”). Badenoch is probably more of an online native than most of her leader of the oppositon predecessors, but she would do well to remember David Cameron’s wise words on this subject.

4) She is easily tripped up because her party is all over the place on policy. I confess, I had to Google the shadow science secretary (Alan Mak), but it turns out Starmer was right to say Mak has called for the employers’ NICs increase to be reversed.

5) She always sounds excessively patronising.

6) She can get blamed for the Conservative party’s dire record in office on public services. Admittedly, mostly this is not her fault. She did not even become an MP until 2017. She could deal with this by disowning some of what was done by her predecessors – and PMQs is a good place to do that – but she hasn’t.

None of this means Badenoch can’t succeed in this format. It is still early days, and Labour would be mad to write her off now. But she hasn’t yet found a way of throwing Starmer off his stride in this area.

After PMQs O’Flynn was reasonably encouraged.

Much sharper from Kemi this week. Some good one-liners. That’s much more like it.

But Hodges was not impressed.

Kemi Badenoch started well by skewering Starmer on Rachel Reeves “no more taxes” promise. But then she lost her way, and stupidly raised that ridiculous petition. A couple of good lines, but she hasn’t got sufficient presence or gravitas at the Despatch Box.

Whatever you think about Stephen Flynn and the SNP, the gulf in class between this question and Kemi Badenoch’s efforts was stark.

Hodges also pointed out that Badenoch was wrong to say farmers did not protest after the last Tory budget. It turns out they did.