Keir Starmer predicts difficult times for the British. The first budget of the Labour government in the United Kingdom, which will be presented at the end of October, promises to be “painful”, warned this Tuesday, August 27, the new Prime Minister, who denounced the “economic black hole” left by the Conservatives.
“I’m going to be honest with you: the budget that comes in October will be painful,” admitted the head of government, who was widely elected in early July after 14 years in Conservative power, during a speech in the gardens of Downing Street ahead of the parliamentary session. “We have no choice given the situation we are in: those with the strongest shoulders will have to bear the heaviest burden,” he stressed, outlining cuts in public spending or increases in certain taxes on October 30.
A budget hole of 26 billion euros?
Labour campaigned on a strong economic refocus and promised tough spending management, imposing drastic choices. But the government is now warning it will have to go even further than planned after Chancellor Rachel Reeves accused the Conservatives in July of “masking” a £22bn budget hole.
“The situation is worse than we ever imagined,” Keir Starmer said on Tuesday, claiming that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR, the equivalent of the French Court of Auditors) “was not aware of it”. “We have inherited a black hole, both in the economy and on social issues,” he continued, in reference to the riots that shook dozens of cities in England and Northern Ireland in early August.
The violence erupted after a knife attack that killed three girls during a dance class on July 29 in Southport, northwest England. It was fueled by far-right agitators, amid rumours that the suspect was wrongly portrayed as a Muslim asylum seeker. The xenophobic and Islamophobic violence, which has targeted mosques and hotels hosting asylum seekers, has “exposed the cracks in our foundations, weakened by a decade of division and decline” under the Conservatives, Starmer condemned. “That is why we must act and do things differently. That means being honest with people […] and honestly, things are going to get worse before they get better,” he acknowledged.