Rachel Reeves is set on Wednesday to break her party’s manifesto pledge, which states: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people.” The Chancellor and PM have offered many definitions for who ‘working people‘ are. Before the election Reeves said “Working people are people who go out to work and work for their incomes.” 

Rachel resigned from Halifax Bank of Scotland in December 2009, where she worked – as Guido revealed last week – in a mundane support department managing administration matters. This has been confirmed by her team, who, when Guido asked where she worked instead, said she stood as a parliamentary candidate. An unpaid role, which means that Reeves spent around 150 days as a non-working person before the election in May…

Westminster sources say six months is a long time to be a parliamentary candidate without another job. They point out that Leeds West was a highly safe Labour seat at the time and didn’t demand intensive campaigning. Reeves was already the prospective parliamentary candidate from the summer…

Gordon Brown announced the election on 6^th April 2010 – long after Reeves became a full-time unpaid campaigner. Testimony from sources who worked in the bank during this period say that after Lloyds took over HBOS personnel from several departments left in agreement with the firm. How did she manage as a non-working person for six months without an expense account?

Starmer has produced another new definition of “working people” at his speech today as he mentions them 26 times:

“The working people of this country know exactly who they are.”

Starmer may be suprised by the extent to which that’s proved to be true on Wednesday. Meanwhile he announces £240 million in funding to get people back to work and keeps shtum on anything else in Wednesday’s budget. He claims people can criticise his remedies as their “prerogative” and says they need to spell out an alternative path. They may do come the next election…

The PM diverted from his manfesto pledges when talking about tax:

“We made a clear promise to working people not to raise income tax, VAT or their national insurance.”

Labour’s manifesto said: “We will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.” What will the working people who know who they are make of that?

Once again the No 10 communications operation is breaking down. Starmer told broadcast journalists yesterday night that someone who works and also gets income from shares or property “wouldn’t come within my definition” of a “working person.” Today his spokesman clarified that “a person who holds a small amount of savings in stocks and shares still counts as a working person.” Guido cast his mind back to before 5^th July, when Labour made a specific pledge in its manifesto: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people”…

These are the definitions of “working people” the public was given prior to the election:

• Reeves: “Working people are people who go out to work and work for their incomes. Sort of by definition, really, working people are those people who go out and work and earn their money through hard work. Some people, who go out to work haven’t been able to build up savings. Many other people who go out to work, have had to run down their savings. But there are people who do have savings, who have been able to save up and those are working people as well.“
• Starmer:  “Yes, I’m a working person, I come within my own definition of a working person, which is earning my living, paying my taxes and knowing what it means to save money.”
• Reeves: “Working people are people who get their income from going out to work everyday, and also pensioners that have worked all their lives and are now in retirement, drawing down on their pensions.“

Compare that to now, days before the budget.

• Starmer: “I have in my mind the sort of people that go out, earn their living, have maybe a bit of savings, but not huge savings. And there when things get a bit tough, they can’t simply get a cheque book out and sort of write their way out of the problems that they’re facing. It’s those people that are working hard, saving where they can. Of course, I think most people try to do that where they can, although it’s difficult. But [it’s] the sort of people that have the anxiety I suppose in the bottom of their stomach that should something happen to them or their family, they know they can’t simply write a cheque to get themselves out of any future difficulty. They’re the people I have most in mind when I make the decisions I make.”
• Bryant: “[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.”
• Kinnock: “Obviously the definitions have to be seen in the round and that’s what’s going to be put on the table.”

Spot the difference? They did promise change…

Labour’s muddled definition of “working people” has now shifted three times in a week, adding to the farcical spectacle surrounding their manifesto tax pledges. Yesterday, Keir Starmer said that Britons earning income from shares or property aren’t “working people.” Sparking fresh fears of looming tax hikes for investors…

In a failed attempt to clarify the “working people” line, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, James Murray, made the morning media rounds. Speaking on the Today Programme, he was asked six times a simple question: “Do landlords work?” And six times, he dodged the question, hiding behind a stream of evasive waffle instead:

This won’t be music to the ears of 2.82 million private landlords in the UK, who now brace for the potential of steep tax hikes in the upcoming budget. Labour has taken the “campaign in poetry, govern in prose” approach to whole new level…