General election: Starmer and Sunak clash over Conservatives’ national service plan

Published

4 months ago

May 27, 2024

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Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer have come to blows over the Conservatives’ plan to introduce national service for teenagers.

Labour leader Sir Keir said the Conservatives’ first major policy announcement of the election campaign would amount to a “teenage Dad’s Army”, in reference to the popular 70s sitcom about a hapless group of men who were ineligible for military service.

But the prime minister defended his plan for 18-year-olds to serve in the military for a year or do mandatory volunteering, saying it is “absolutely the right policy at the right time”.

Sir Keir called the policy “desperate”.

“All this spinning round and round, it’s symbolic of the chaos and the instability,” the Labour leader added.

“You’ve seen that again over the past few days, the desperation of this national service policy, a sort of teenage Dad’s Army, paid for, I kid you not, by cancelling levelling up funding and money from tax avoidance that we would use to invest in our NHS.

“I think they are rummaging around in the toy box to try and find any plan that they can throw on the table. I don’t think it’ll work.”

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Mr Sunak insisted the plan would “give young people skills and opportunities for life”.

He added: “It’s going to foster a culture of service that will make our society more cohesive. And it’s going to strengthen our country’s resilience and security.

“So I think it’s absolutely the right policy at the right time.”

He dismissed suggestions mandatory national service was an un-conservative policy, and said: “I believe this is the right thing to do because this is how we’ll deliver a secure future for everyone and our country.”

Sir Keir, in his first major speech of the campaign, said the Conservatives were planning to take money from the levelling up fund to pay for the national service policy, which shows “they’ve completely abandoned the project they put before the electorate in 2019”.

He accused Mr Sunak of governing to appease sections of the Tory party, not for the whole country, and said the government’s Rwanda policy was evidence of that.

Placing security at the heart of his speech, Sir Keir said the scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was part of Mr Sunak’s “gimmicks and gestures”.

“He never believed in it. He knew it wouldn’t work. He said that they tried to stop it when he was chancellor, but he was too weak to stand up to his party,” he said.

“He caved in, and now he’s gone through and it’s cost £600m. And now has called an election before it can be tested. Weakness upon weakness.”

The Labour leader admitted he was “not against third country processing” and it has been successful in places such as Afghanistan but said there was a difference in processing people in a different country and “simply deporting people to Rwanda”.

During his speech on Monday, Sir Keir went over the policies Labour is offering up to voters as he tried to persuade them he has turned the Labour Party around from its Jeremy Corbyn era.

Labour’s six ‘core tests’

Economic stability – keep inflation, taxes and mortages low
NHS – cut waiting times, 4,000 extra appointments a week, paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-doms
Border security – new Border Security Command with more resources and new powers to stop criminal gangs bringing people over in small boats
Energy – new company called Great British Energy harnessing clean power and making the UK energy independent, paid for by a windfall tax on energy companies
Anti-social behaviour crackdown – 13,000 new police and community support officers paid for by
Education – 6,500 new teachers paid for by introducing VAT and business tax on private schools

But Mr Sunak accused the Labour leader of having “no plan, no ideas”.

“We’ve had another speech from Keir Starmer, another half hour speech. Not a single new idea. He’s taking the British public for granted,” he said.

“I’m the one that’s putting bold ideas on the table. I’m the one that’s got a plan, and that’s how we’re going to deliver a secure future for everyone.

“And as I said his approach is to take people for granted. He’s got nothing to say, no plan, no ideas.”

Politics

Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer ‘very sensible’ to accept football tickets worth thousands

Published

13 hours ago

September 21, 2024

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Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer 'very sensible' to accept football tickets worth thousands

Lisa Nandy has said Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to accept thousands of pounds worth of football tickets was “very sensible”.

The minister for culture, media and sport also said she had never accepted free clothes from a donor.

Speaking to Sky News at the start of the Labour Party conference today, the MP for Wigan said: “The problem that has arisen since [Sir Keir] became leader of the opposition and then prime minister is that for him to sit in the stands would require a huge security detail, would be disruptive for other people and it would cost the taxpayer a lot of money.

“So I think he’s taken a very sensible decision that’s not the right and appropriate thing to do, and it’s right to accept that he has to go and sit in a different area.

“But I know that he’d much rather be sitting in the stands cheering people on with the usual crowd that he’s been going to the football with for years.”

Ms Nandy also said while she has not accepted free clothes – joking “I think you can probably see that I choose my own clothes sadly” – she doesn’t “make any judgements about what other members of parliament do”.

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She said: “The only judgement I would make is if they’re breaking the rules, so they’re trying to hide what they’re doing. That’s when problems arise.

“Because the point of being open and transparent is that people can see where the relationships are, and they can then judge for themselves whether there’s been any undue influence.”

She asserted there had not been an undue influence in gifts accepted by senior Labour figures, adding: “We don’t want the news and the commentary to be dominated by conversations about clothes.

“We rightly have a system, I think, where the taxpayer doesn’t fund these things. We don’t claim on expenses for them. And so MPs will always take donations, will always take gifts in kind.

“MPs of all political parties have historically done that and that is the system that we have.”

She added: “I don’t think there’s any suggestion here that Keir Starmer has broken any rules. I don’t think there’s any suggestion that he’s done anything wrong.

“We expect our politicians to be well turned out, we expect them to be people who go out and represent us at different events and represent the country at different events and are clothed appropriately.

“But the point is that when we accept donations for that or for anything else, that we declare them and we’re open and transparent about them.”

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Sir Keir, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves said yesterday they will no longer accept donations in the future to pay for clothes.

The announcement followed criticism of Sir Keir’s gifts from donors, which included clothing worth £16,200 and multiple pairs of glasses worth £2,485, according to the MPs’ register of interests.

The register shows Ms Rayner has accepted clothing donations to the value of £2,230.

Sky News also revealed the scale of Sir Keir’s donations this week as part of our Westminster Accounts investigation.

Sir Keir was found to have received substantially more gifts and freebies than any other MP – his total in gifts, benefits, and hospitality topped £100,000 since December 2019.