Labour risks destroying our economy - Starmer and Reeves are not to be trusted, says Anna Firth MP
Anna Firth argues Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves cannot be trusted
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My grandmother once told me that there are not two, but three, certainties in life: death, taxes and bankruptcy under a Labour Government. Was she right? History would certainly suggest so.
Every single outgoing Labour Government has left the country poorer and with higher unemployment than when they entered Government. When Blair and Brown came to power in 1997 the economy was growing, debt falling, employment rising and investment accumulating. Indeed, they were elected on a pledge to stick to the Conservatives spending plans for their first three years in office.
After that, the Labour Government spent around 10 per cent more taxpayers’ money every single year for the next 10 years then they raised in taxation revenue. They failed time and time again to meet their committed expenditure through any method, so they borrowed, borrowed and borrowed some more.
When Labour finally left office in 2010, not only was public and private debt and the deficit ballooning, there were seven million unemployed people and rising, including one million unemployed young people. Despite promising to abolish boom and bust, Gordon Brown only kept the first half of his promise. In the words of their own Chief Secretary to the Treasury, “I’m afraid there is no money.”
So would Starmer and Reeves be any different? Absolutely not.
Not only do Labour have no plans to stick to Conservative spending plans, on the contrary, their plan is to max out on the country’s credit card almost immediately with a series of new spending commitments that would result in an immediate £6.5billion blackhole in the country's finances every year.
Hard-working people up and down the country will be paying higher taxes to pay for Labour’s obsession with net zero. Decarbonising the grid by 2030, including banning all new petrol and diesel cars, and phasing out all North sea oil and gas is expensive madness. Labour have no credible plan for our country or our economy and no answers as to who will be paying for all their crazy ideas.
Of course, the Conservatives have not got everything right, no Government ever does, but they do stand in stark contrast to Labour.
Despite dealing with the biggest public health crisis in a century, the biggest security crisis in Europe for 75 years, and an international resurgence in inflation and rising interest rates, we still have an economy that is out-performing most other countries in the G7. Unemployment is at near record lows and the youth unemployment rate has halved. Most importantly, since 2010 the Conservative government has presided over the creation of 800 new jobs every single day that the government has been in power.
We will always stand up for middle England. Following the Budget, the average earner in the UK now has the lowest effective personal tax rate since 1975 when a Labour Government set the top tax rate in this country at a whopping 83 percent.
Conservatives want working people to keep more of their money whereas Labour have shown time and time again that they do not. Whilst the Conservative Government has more than doubled the personal allowance between 2010 and 2021, Labour have voted against every single increase, every time. They claim to be the party of the working man but they are actually the party of taxing the working man.
Clearly, the tax burden on people is still too high, but under Labour we know it will shoot higher. Government’s do not have money. Labour’s spending pledges are merely promises to take money from hard-working people and redistribute it to others. With no credible plan, Labour will undo all the progress we have made in the past 14 years, destroy our economy, tax middle England to death, and leave the Conservatives, once again, to pick up the pieces.