Sunak & Starmer Must Come Clean on Cuts
The SNP has challenged Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer to come clean on where the axe will fall amid warnings of £20 billion of cuts to public services.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies accused the Tories and Labour Party of a “conspiracy of silence” over cuts, warning “Government and opposition are… not acknowledging the scale of the choices and trade-offs that will face us after the election. They, and we, could be in for a rude awakening when those choices become unavoidable.”
The IFS has said current UK government policy, which is backed by the Labour Party, implies a real-terms cut to net public sector investment of more than 25% (£18 billion) between 2024–25 and 2028–29 – leading to SNP warnings that Westminster will impose another decade of austerity under Sunak or Starmer.
SNP Economy spokesperson at Westminster, Drew Hendry MP, has said Starmer is “wrong to copy the Tories on imposing swingeing cuts to public services” – after the Labour Party leader backed all the main measures in the Tory budget and ruled out taxing the wealthy to protect public services.
It comes as Labour National Campaign Coordinator, Pat McFadden MP, was also forced to admit to BBC Newsnight that the Labour Party supports all of the Tory budget and has identical fiscal rules. This led presenter Victoria Derbyshire to say “you’re backing all of today’s budget, you’ve got identical fiscal rules – how does Labour’s economic policy differ from the Conservatives?“
It should be clearer than ever that Labour is not really in opposition at Westminster.
GRAEME
A Labour government would pursue identical policies to the Tories – they have no ideas, no vision.
It is accordingly more important than ever that we return a strong team of SNP MPs to the House of Commons in the coming General Election, as only the SNP stand for any hope of a better path for Scotland.
Starmer is deeply misguided if he believes what the people of Scotland want is more Tory economics and swingeing austerity cuts, but more likely he simply does not care as he plays to the right wing south of the border.
