Rayner couldn’t explain what Labour meant by “working people” at Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions today. Helpfully, Science Minister Chris Bryant has just come up with a new line on what it means: those badly affected during the cost of living crisis. Bryant clarified on Politics Live just now:
“[Working people] has become a shorthand in political circles for the people who were particularly disadvantaged in the cost of living crisis…that suddenly meant that people had to find an extra £300 a month for their mortgages so those are the people that we didn’t want to hit, so we wanted to say in the general election we don’t want to take more tax from you and that’s what we said.”
Last week, Labour MP Dan Tomlinson claimed that a rise in employer NICs would constitute a new tax on “working people” because someone who owns and runs a business is obviously a “working person.” On Monday, Care Minister Stephen Kinnock was asked whether six-figure earners were working people, to which he refused to answer six times, then conceding that Labour hadn’t worked out what a “working person” was yet. Labour continue to waffle and contradict each other over what “working people” means. Opening the door to tax hikes for all..
Josh Simons, newly elected MP for Makerfield and close ally of Starmer, is continuing his new campaign against Elon Musk’s Twitter. Simons complains that Musk’s tweets are too visible to people and claims that letting consumers who are disattisfied leave voluntarily is not enough:
“Waiting for Westminster to voluntarily quit X risks a very long wait… it’s a mistake to focus on individual choices… the question has to be: What do we expect of this platform?
Rising star Simons, who headed up Starmerite think tank Labour Together before his election and is now trying to get himself onto the Technology Select Committee, complained on Politics Live: “I do not want any man or woman to have that kind of power over our public debate.” Helpfully ignoring that Twitter closely managed reams of content before it was taken over by Musk…
He went on to spell out his personal dislike of Musk:
“Musk is a problem. I don’t like him. But Musk is symptomatic of the fact that he has this power… Think of the algorithm like a newspaper editor. Newspaper editors have values, they have standards, they have integrity. The people who build the algorithms should have the same values and integrity and professional standards.”
The key difference between a democratised social media and the legacy dead tree press is, of course, that editors and hacks operate in collusion with politicians. Now that information is no longer so closely controlled authoritarian politicians are itching to regulate a free social media to exctinction…
Politics Live today has seen fiery exchanges between Energy Minister Miatta Fahnbulleh and critics of Labour’s extreme freebie donation hypocrisy. Brexit veteran Lord Stewart Jackson had a few choice words for Labour:
“We’ve seen a bacchanalian orgy of greed – this is ridiculous frankly and with respect you’re responsible for the the way people are thinking about this I have no problem with people taking hospitality and declaring it in the rules. But the Labour Party have this sort of moral relativism where they say ‘it’s all right for us because we’re the virtuous ones and the Tories are uniquely greedy self-serving incompetent et cetera.’ The number one political rule is: don’t believe your own PR.”
Jackson pointed out that the problem is the hypocrisy: “you’ve framed the debate in terms of ‘the Tories are greedy’ and people hate hypocrisy from politicians.” He added interestingly that the public “will forgive a sex scandal… what they loath is hypocrisy.” It’s not letting up for Downing Street…
Emily Thornberry fell into a bit of a depression during Politics Live after she was asked whether she was surprised at missing out on a Cabinet role:
“Yeah. Yeah, I was surprised, I didn’t know that was going to happen. Yeah I’m very sad about it, yes, I would have liked to have been in the Cabinet, you know, because I’d been in the Shadow Cabinet for eight and a half years continually and on the front bench for more than ten. I didn’t get offered any government job. Yeah, so it’s sad.”
Thornberry eventually mentioned that she wants to stand for chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee “which would be a great job.” Ex-chairman Alicia Kearns advised that “you have to be willing to scrutinise you own party in recognition that country comes first.” Don’t think Emily would have any problem with that…
Internal divides aren’t just a Tory trait. Whether or not to stick to the £28 billion a year figure on their green spending plan seems to be a topic of heated debate in the Shadow Cabinet – Rachel Reeves refused to even mention the number last week while Keir Starmer yesterday committed to the the figure on Times Radio. On Politics Live today, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott asked Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson whose team she was on, Rachel Reeves’ or Starmer’s. Bridget made a bit of a Freudian slip: “Rache…uh…Laura..uh…honestly”. Whoops…
Play it safe, play it so very safe. Rachel Reeves’ backtracking clarification that Labour will not reverse the abolition of the EU-imposed cap on bankers’ bonuses has led to lampooning from all sides. There were only three months between Reeves claiming the scrappage “tells you all you need to know about this Government” and her new claim that Labour will “unashamedly champion” bankers and keep the cap off. Who’s dancing to Truss’ tune now?
Barry Gardiner came out against Reeves in the morning. Then SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn lampooned Labour for the U-turn at PMQs, after which Wes Streeting was cornered into arguing that Reeves’ criticism was about prioritisation on Politics Live and insisting that Labour is being “ruthlessly disciplined”. A U-turn timed to give businesses a warm, fuzzy feeling at Labour’s corporate-conference tomorrow…
UPDATE: Jacob Rees-Mogg tells Guido “Rachel Reeves likes cribbing her texts so I am delighted that she now takes them from the Tories“.
