For a politician who branded his entire career around honesty and integrity, it’s astonishing how little Keir Starmer’s policy agenda resembles the manifesto he ran for the Labour leadership on two years ago. Guido’s already gone into detail about how he’s discarded every single one of his 10 leadership election pledges, though a recent policy leak to Paul Waugh has riled the hard left and Owen Jones to new heights:

More fundamentally, senior figures in the party believe there are smarter "more creative" ways to raise tax from the top 5% than income tax. The aim is still to create a fairer system overall than the Tories.

— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) May 28, 2022

In a video yesterday, Jones laid into the forthcoming policy announcement as proving Starmer’s leadership campaign was the “most dishonest in British democratic history”, preemptively rebutting any viewers who’d parry with Boris’s relationship with the truth. Jones points out that other than his promise break on national insurance, the PM has pretty much stuck to all his leadership pledges.

Starmer’s latest pledge break on “economic justice” now joins announcements breaking his leadership campaign pledges of: social justice, climate justice, promoting peace & human rights, common ownership, defending migrants’ rights, strengthening workers’ rights and trade, unions, radical devolution of power, equality, and effective opposition to the Tories. And all before getting into his two year sustained campaign to cancel Brexit…