Starmer's Speech: Difficult Choices Ahead?

morning and welcome Sunshine no rain no wind probably tempting fate but it's really good to see you all here see familiar faces uh in this Garden so thank you so much for coming along this morning hi there so today K starma gave a speech from the garden of number 10 Downing Street where he outlined some of the so-called difficult choices that his government was facing not least of which was a 2 2 billion Hall that he highlighted in the public finances now those of us that follow politics closely realize that none of this was news to him it was one of the most frustrating features of the election campaign that well-respected bodies such as the institute for fiscal studies and journalists were pointing out to the labor party that there was this Hall in the public finances that was caused really by the conservative party penciling in cuts to the public sector in into their previous budgets which meant that either the labor party was going to have to find some money in taxation borrow more or go ahead with those cuts and many of us pointed out that that was a pretty untenable position for the Leb party to be in and that the last thing the country needed was more austerity under a government let's start by hearing from K starma and if we don't take tough action across the board we won't be able to fix the foundations of the country as we need I didn't want to means test the winter fuel payment but it was a choice that we had to make a choice to protect the most vulnerable pensioners while doing what is necessary to repair the public finances because pensioners also rely on a functioning NHS good public transport strong National infrastructure they want their children to be able to buy homes they want their grandchildren to get a good education so we have made that difficult decision to mend the public finances so everyone benefits in the long term including pensioners I'm just going to pause it there it seems to me that whenever politicians talk about difficult choices they're always talking about choices like this they're never talking about difficult choices to take on the vested interests in our society to tax the wealthy for example to Clause tax loopholes to do any number of things other than this that would help to bring in money to finance public services and that would secure the money for the long term what this is is picking around the edges and making the state less generous and it's targeting those people that have paired in throughout their lives fully expecting the state will be there to support them in old age it's wrong and it's not something a government a labor government should be doing not least of all as one of their first acts let's continue with the speech now that is a difficult tradeoff and there will be more to come I won't shy away from making unpopular decisions now if it's the right thing for the country in the long term that's what a government of service means this shouldn't be a country where people fear walking down their street they TV showing cars and buildings being set on fire this shouldn't be a country where the Prime Minister can't guarantee prison places this shouldn't be a country where people are paying thousands more on their mortgages or waiting months for Hospital appointments they desperately need where our waters are filled with sewage where parents worry that their kids won't get the opportunities that they did where nothing seems to work anymore I'm just going to pause it there starm was right clearly the public sector is not functioning very well at the moment but in order to understand the problem we need to have an understanding of what caused it in the first place and what caused it is the conservative party when they came into Power using a very similar logic to what we're hearing from starma now they said we need to make Cuts we need to get the deficit down so we can get public finances under control so that we can um you know fix the RIS roof so we can get back on with uh investing at some point in the future in other words we're going to have pain now in order that we can fix things and we can and things can be better moving forward well it didn't work like that did it and part of the problem is that the logic of austerity is self-defeating so lots of the cuts that you make are going to make the problem worse um you know and we can see this in any area of Our Lives um if you fail to deal with a problem early it gets worse and then you end end up having to spend more in the future and that was the logic of austerity and that's what we're all dealing with now things did get worse and now it's going to cost more to fix and what we find from the labor government is rather than investing that money that is necessary both for their objective of getting economic growth and to get Public Services moving again they're refusing to make that choice and that's because they they fundamentally fail to understand that the job of the state is to redirect the resources of our society towards the public good they just fundamentally don't get that and the reason why resources in our economy are not being directed towards the public good it's got nothing to do with what we ordinarily understand as the public finances it's to do with how those resources are distributed in our society in a very unequal way in other words most of the resources in our society are not held by Ordinary People they're held by the rich and so in order to do the job that the state needs to do it it's not incidental that the state taxes wealth it's actually a precondition of the state doing what it needs to do so the fact that starma refuses to tax wealth is a fundamental problem to his program right let's continue with the video so when I talk about the inheritance the last government left us the 22 billion pound black hole in our finances that isn't about a line on a graph that's about people's lives your lives and the tourist are still not being honest they know their recklessness cost them the election but they won't accept the cost that they've inflicted on the country and they won't apologize for what they've cost you they're just still thinking about themselves and this government won't always be perfect but I promise you this you will be at the heart of it in the Forefront of our minds at the center of everything that we do and that's why I wanted to invite you here today to show that decent hardworking people who make up the backbone of this country belong here this is a government for you so I feel like I should apologize for subjecting you to so much of K dama because what you end up getting is a hell of a lot of cliche is a not love substance and that's how the the speech felt throughout to me um look what we will get in the autum statement is some nibbling around at the edges of this because the labor party have said that it's not going to increase taxes on working people and you can believe that as far as it goes they' said they're not going to increase income tax they're not going to increase National Insurance and they're not going to increase V and so what you're going to see in the budget is attempts to shift the tax burden away from income towards wealth and that is welcome what I'm saying is that the measures that the labor party are going to put in place don't go far enough um and the fact that the labor party making so-called difficult choices that the first decisions they make are those that affect those that are vulnerable in our society the elderly it's not a very good sign of things to come we need fundamental Roo and Branch reform to rebalance our society so that the state can perform its vital functions for the rest of us so that's all for now hope you enjoy this very short episode and I hope you join me again next time