Winter fuel cut vote will test Sir Keir Starmer’s authority
Sir Keir Starmer warned during the election campaign of the need for “tough decisions”, but carefully avoided setting out where the axe would fall.
Now it’s clear who will be losing out – starting with most pensioners losing winter fuel payments worth up to £300 – unease is bubbling under the surface.
Politics live: Number 10 not ‘softening’ winter fuel payment cut
There is no doubt the government will win Tuesday’s vote as they have a huge majority of 174.
But the number of abstentions – or MPs who cannot face voting for it – especially if they number dozens, will test the prime minister’s authority and signal whether his backbenchers have the stomach for more of these cuts.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Over the summer, Labour MPs have seen their inboxes fill up with pensioners and their families angry that those who rely on the payments fear they will face a cold winter in hardship.
The benefit will be restricted, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in July, to those who claim pension credit, and no longer given to the 10 million people aged over 66 who don’t.
She told MPs at a meeting tonight that it was a difficult decision, and she “wasn’t immune to the arguments against it”, but that sticking to it was a question of economic credibility.
Government sources claimed she had won the argument that “‘no one likes it, but we have to do it”.
Pensioners, she said, could blame the Conservatives for leaving a financial black hole.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Reeves defends fuel payment cuts
The problem is that 880,000 pensioners who are eligible for this top-up do not claim it, so they will lose out despite being the poorest – including some on just £13,000 a year.
The government has run a campaign aimed at increasing the uptake, but the payments will go straight away.
Campaigners – pensioners have vocal campaign groups on their side – also say the million or so people just above the threshold will also struggle.
Dozens of Labour MPs are weighing up whether they can vote for the measure, which will be a three-line whip. Some feel the £1.5bn saving will have a painful price.
MP for York Central Rachel Maskell, who told Sky News she would abstain, said the swift timing of the vote, and lack of assessment of its impact, has left many concerned – not just those on the left sceptical about Sir Keir’s leadership.
A House of Lords committee which scrutinises secondary legislation said it had been introduced without proper evidence of its impact.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Streeting ‘not remotely happy’ about cutting winter fuel payments
A former member of the shadow cabinet, who will be reluctantly voting for the measure, told me he expected the chancellor to be forced to make changes in the run-up to the budget.
In an interview this weekend, Sir Keir stood firm, saying there would be no change in course – as well as further difficult decisions coming down the track.
He will head to Brighton in the morning in a big moment for an incoming Labour prime minister – addressing the Trades Union Congress (TUC) annual conference.
He will be braced for criticism, with major union leaders including Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, and head of the TUC, Paul Novak, piling the pressure on and saying he should U-turn.
Sir Keir knows the cut will get through parliament and has shown he can be ruthless, having withdrawn the party whip from MPs who voted to axe the two-child benefit cap.
But Labour MPs who back the measure through gritted teeth, and feel it’s had too high a price, will be harder to win over next time.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission shouldn’t grant broad regulatory relief to crypto companies launching tokenized stock offerings, a stock exchange advocacy group has argued.
The World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) said in a Nov. 21 letter to the SEC that it was “alarmed at the plethora of brokers and crypto-trading platforms offering or intending to offer so-called tokenized US stocks.”
“These products are marketed as stock tokens or the equivalent to stocks when they are not,” the group said. “This development poses multiple and interconnected risks.”
Multiple crypto exchanges are seeking to offer tokenized stocks in the US, allowing investors to buy exposure to public companies without owning shares. They’re touted as having faster settlements compared to stock exchanges and can be traded at any time, not just during market hours.
Crypto companies that aren’t SEC-registered broker-dealers would have to get an exemption from the agency, and its chair, Paul Atkins, has floated granting one.
Tokenized stock exemption relief must be “targeted,” group says
The WFE, which counts Cboe and the Nasdaq as members, said it supports the SEC using exemptive relief, but it is “concerned that the broad use of such relief presents risks to investors and market integrity.”
“We simply believe that this authority is most effective when exercised in a targeted manner and not applied as a means to circumvent or fast-track exemptions to longstanding regulatory requirements,” it added.
The WFE said tokenization “is likely a natural evolution in capital markets” and that it was “pro-innovation,” but that it “must be done in a responsible way that does not put investors or market integrity at risk.”
The group said it would be better for the SEC to make a public rule filing to garner feedback rather than to “seek to make large-scale changes with exemptive relief.”
“Alternatively, the Commission could consider the creation of a sandbox regime or other innovation facilitator,” it added.
In August, the WFE urged the SEC, the European Securities and Markets Authority and the International Organization of Securities Commissions for stricter oversight of tokenized stocks, arguing they lacked investor protections.
SEC weighs exemptions for tokenized stocks
Atkins, a former crypto lobbyist, has said he’s considering an “innovation exemption” to relieve crypto firms from certain regulations, thereby speeding up the process of bringing crypto and blockchain products to market.
Related: Tokenized money market funds surge to $9B, BIS warns of new risks
“An innovation exemption could help fulfill President Trump’s vision to make America the crypto capital of the planet by encouraging developers, entrepreneurs, and other firms that are willing to comply with certain conditions to innovate with onchain technologies in the United States,” he told a group of crypto executives at a meeting in June.
US trading platforms have begun lining up to offer tokenized stocks under the crypto-friendly SEC. Robinhood Markets began offering hundreds of tokenized stocks to European investors in June, with the intention of bringing the same products to the US, following a similar offer by Kraken a month earlier.
Coinbase also reportedly sought SEC approval in June to offer tokenized stocks, with its legal chief, Paul Grewal, saying it was a “huge priority” for the crypto exchange.
Non-crypto companies are also getting in on the action. In September, Nasdaq requested a rule change with the SEC to allow the exchange to list tokenized stocks.
Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered
Over and over again, in the run-up to the election and beyond, the prime minister and the chancellor told voters they would not put up taxes on working people – that their manifesto plans for government were fully costed and, with the tax burden at a 70-year high, they were not in the business of raising more taxes.
On Wednesday the chancellor broke those pledges as she lifted taxes by another £26bn, adding to the £40bn rise in her first budget.
She told working people a year ago she would not extend freezing tax thresholds – a Conservative policy – because it would “hurt working people”.
Budget latest: ‘It can only lead to the death of us at the general election’
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Beth Rigby asks Reeves: How can you stay in your job?
On Wednesday she ripped up that pledge, as she extended the threshold freeze for three years, dragging 800,000 workers into tax and another million into the higher tax band to raise £8.3bn.
Rachel Reeves said it was a Labour budget and she’s right.
In the first 17 months of this government, Labour have raised tens of billions in taxes, while reversing on welfare reform – the U-turn on the winter fuel allowance and disability benefits has cost £6.6bn.
Ms Reeves even lifted the two-child benefit cap on Wednesday, at a cost of £3bn, despite the prime minister making a point of not putting that pledge in the manifesto as part of the “hard choices” this government would make to try to bear down on the tax burden for ordinary people. The OBR predicts one in four people would be caught by the 40% higher rate of tax by the end of this parliament.
Those higher taxes were necessary for two reasons and aimed at two audiences – the markets and the Labour Party.
For the former, the tax rises help the chancellor meet her fiscal rules, which requires the day-to-day spending budget to be in a surplus by 2029-30.
Before this budget, her headroom was just £9.9bn, which made her vulnerable to external shocks, rises in the cost of borrowing or lower tax takes. Now she has built her buffer to £22bn, which has pleased the markets and should mean investors begin to charge Britain less to borrow.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Reeves announces tax rises
As for the latter, this was also the chancellor raising taxes to pay for spending and it pleased her backbenchers – when I saw some on the PM’s team going into Downing Street in the early evening, they looked pretty pleased.
I can see why: amid all the talk of leadership challenge, this was a budget that helped buy some time.
“This is a budget for self-preservation, not for the country,” remarked one cabinet minister to me this week.
You can see why: ducking welfare reform, lifting the two-child benefit cap – these are decisions a year-and-a-half into government that Downing Street has been forced into by a mutinous bunch of MPs.
With a majority of 400 MPs, you might expect the PM and his chancellor to take the tough decisions and be on the front foot. Instead they find themselves just trying to survive, preserve their administration and try to lead from a defensive crouch.
When I asked the chancellor about breaking manifesto promises to raise taxes on working people, she argued the pledge explicitly involved rates of income tax (despite her pledge not to extend the threshold freeze in the last budget because it “hurt working people”).
Read more:
Budget 2025: The key points at a glance
Why Labour MPs may like Reeves’s budget
Trying to argue it is not a technical breach – the Institute of Fiscal Studies disagreed – rather than taking it on and explaining those decisions to the country says a lot about the mindset of this administration.
One of the main questions that struck me reflecting on this budget is accountability to the voters.
Labour in opposition, and then in government, didn’t tell anyone they might do this, and actually went further than that – explicitly saying they wouldn’t. They were asked, again and again during the election, for tax honesty. The prime minister told me that he’d fund public spending through growth and had “no plans” to raise taxes on working people.
Those people have been let down. Labour voters are predominantly middle earners and higher earning, educated middle classes – and it is these people who are the ones who will be hit by these tax rises that have been driven to pay for welfare spending rather than that much mooted black hole (tax receipts were much better than expected).
This budget is also back-loaded – a spend-now-pay-later budget, as the IFS put it, with tax rises coming a year before the election. Perhaps Rachel Reeves is hoping again something might turn up – her downgraded growth forecasts suggests it won’t.
This budget does probably buy the prime minister and his chancellor more time. But as for credibility, that might not be recoverable. This administration was meant to change the country. Many will be looking at the tax rises and thinking it’s the same old Labour.
Rachel Reeves will face further questions this morning after being accused of presiding over a manifesto-busting budget that rose taxes by £26bn.
The chancellor has acknowledged she is “asking ordinary people to pay a little bit more” following her series of announcements yesterday, including extending the freeze on income tax bands.
But when challenged by Sky News political editor Beth Rigby that this amounted to a breach of Labour’s manifesto, she argued it didn’t because the rates themselves had not changed.
Ms Reeves said the party’s election document was “very clear” about not raising the rates of income tax, national insurance, and VAT.
But she added: “If you’re asking does this have a cost for working people? I acknowledge it does.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Beth Rigby asks Reeves: How can you stay in your job?
The chancellor – who will be questioned on Mornings With Ridge And Frost from 7am – is set to inflict a record tax burden upon Britain.
Her other measures include:
• A “mansion tax” on properties worth over £2m;
• New taxes on the gambling industry to raise more than £1bn;
• A new mileage tax for electric vehicles from April 2028;
• Slashing the amount you can save in a tax-free cash ISA from £20,000 to £12,000, except for over-65s;
And in a move that will prove particularly unpopular with savers, people paying into a pension under salary sacrifice schemes will face national insurance on contributions above £2,000.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
What is a ‘salary sacrifice’?
Read more:
Budget key points at a glance
What the budget means for you
The tax rises – which were published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) ahead of time in an unprecedented blunder – are mostly needed to pay for increased welfare spending.
Ms Reeves announced the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, expected to lift 450,000 children out of poverty.
You should resign, says Badenoch
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused her of “hiking taxers on workers, pensioners, and savers to pay for handouts”, claiming the budget will increase benefits for 560,000 families by £5,000 on average.
Ms Reeves had sought to cut the welfare bill earlier this year, but the government was forced into a damaging retreat after backbench Labour MPs rebelled.
“What she could have chosen today is to bring down welfare spending and get more people into work,” Ms Badenoch told the Commons on Wednesday.
“Instead, she has chosen to put a tax up to tax after tax.”
She called on the chancellor to resign.
From our experts:
Ed Conway: This was a historic budget
Beth Rigby: Labour’s credibility might be shot
Sam Coates: It’s not clear if Reeves will survive
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
How will the budget impact your money?
Under fire from left and right
Labour MPs cheered raucously at the two-child benefit cap announcement, but one backbencher told Sky News: “We are effectively doing government by consent of the PLP, if not the cabinet – a bad place to be.
“The Tories did it for years, and it can only lead to the death of us at the general election.”
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, meanwhile, warned Ms Reeves cannot “tax her way to growth”, while Reform’s Nigel Farage described the budget as an “assault on ambition and saving”.
Greens leader Zack Polanski criticised the budget for not raising taxes on the “super wealthy”.
Read more: A town that feels betrayed
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
What does the public think?
Sky’s Sophy Ridge and Wilfred Frost won’t be the only ones putting the chancellor under more scrutiny today – two influential economic think tanks will also give their full verdicts.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the left-leaning Resolution Foundation have already been critical in their immediate verdicts, with the former describing the budget as “spend now, pay later”, with tax rises being increasingly relied upon over time.
It also accused Ms Reeves of breaching Labour’s manifesto commitments on tax.
The Resolution Foundation warned of a hit to living standards because of Ms Reeves’s measures, though she has said policies aimed at cutting household energy bills and freezing rail fares and prescription charges will help people.
She also claimed her decisions would help cut NHS waiting lists and the national debt.
Also facing more questions today is the head of the OBR, as he remains under pressure over how its forecast of the chancellor’s announcements were published ahead of time.
Follow live updates on the fallout from the budget in the Politics Hub and Money through the day.
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment3 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024