Starmer’s Budget retorts were bland

Keir Starmer really padded out his Budget response speech with pre-prepared lines today, to the extent that it was not quite clear what the Labour attack actually is. It’s always the case that replying to the chancellor the moment he finishes speaking is difficult. Occasionally opposition leaders are able to tease out a clear response to the chancellor; most years the response sounds more like general complaints about what the government has been up to. Today’s speech was very much in the latter category.

Starmer had some jokes, including a very predictable one about Rishi Sunak’s swimming pool, and another out-of-date one about salad shortages: ‘After today, we know the Tory cupboard is as bare as the salad aisle in our supermarkets. The lettuces may be out, but the turnips are in.’ Later, he embarked on an elaborate football analogy about the government breaking its own fiscal rules 11 times, the same size as a football team, and making two more teams with the 22 times they’d changed corporate tax policy. ‘But if he wants the post-match analysis, he’ll have to consult the experts. Back on his screens and ours this weekend. I know the whole house will want to applaud that.’ There wasn’t much applause. 

In the substance of the speech, Starmer largely focused on his ‘13 years of failure’ refrain, saying: ‘It’s been the same story for the whole 13 years, always the sticking plaster, never the cure. Today’s Budget does nothing to change that.’ He complained about the running down of public services, the lack of ambition on industrial strategy and housebuilding, and about the size of the tax burden. His argument was, as it has been for a long time, that Labour would simply do all these things but better. He also tried to take credit for a number of policies on energy, including the windfall tax, the energy price guarantee and prepayment meter installations. 

Starmer closed by telling the House that the country needed ‘change, stability and success’, but what he needed was a bit more time to work out what to actually say, rather than attacking the performance of the government in general.