The general election campaign has begun – as Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer focus on the economy
There may be months to go until the general election, but in both style and substance the long campaign has already begun – with both leaders zoning in on fruitful attack lines and ignoring inconvenient truths.
In his first Sunday morning interview of the year on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Sir Keir Starmer told Wilfred Frost the prime minister should set a date for the vote now and accused him of vainly waiting to clock up two years in Number 10 before calling an election.
A couple of miles across town, in another TV studio, Rishi Sunak seemed unable to make it more than a few minutes without uttering his rival’s name and suggesting questions for his interviewer to put to the Labour leader.
As far as policy is concerned, the crossfire has centred on that traditionally decisive ballot box issue – the economy.
For Labour, a definite pivot is in motion on the party’s 2021 conference pledge to spend £28bn a year on green investment.
The Tories have started vigorously targeting this expensive promise to try to turn it into an example of what they see as Labour profligacy.
Sir Keir said today if Rishi Sunak wanted a fight between “energy independence versus stagnation” then he should “bring it on”.
It’s a fact learned the hard way by many a party leader that the fight you want to have in an election campaign isn’t always the fight you get.
That’s probably why Sir Keir also tried to shift the emphasis from the precise figure to the broader promise of decarbonising electricity by 2030.
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‘I want the election asap’
Many doubt either of these pledges can actually be met.
But for the Opposition, it’s the big-ticket borrowing that risks the votes – so it’s that which is being polished up into a more politically palatable offer.
There’s a similar sense of reality denial around the discussion on tax.
Rishi Sunak gave his clearest indication yet that more tax cuts are on the way in the March budget with a further big offer to voters ahead of the election.
The price of government debt and levels of revenue being brought in by frozen allowances and thresholds mean this is probably feasible in the short term.
Read more:
Can the spring budget reverse Sunak’s electoral fortunes?
PM accused of ‘desperate’ inheritance tax briefing
But the picture is more complicated if you look further ahead.
The prime minister says curbing benefit spending and making the state more efficient is the only way to sustainably cut the tax burden.
To start with, economists will point out that more expenditure in this area goes on benefits for households where someone works and on pensions.
But there are broader pressures too.
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Party leaders gear up for election
Given more money is set to go to areas like health, defence and education, overall spending levels for the years after the election look implausibly tight.
So much so that many conclude the long-term fiscal lookahead is quite simply a fiction designed to clear the way for pre-ballot tax giveaways.
Once again, the priority here appears to be votes.
The rest can be dealt with when the election is won – or, indeed, lost.
The TON Foundation could have avoided its golden visa controversy in the UAE with a brief legal review, a local lawyer told Cointelegraph.
Politics
Norman Tebbit: Former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, the former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died at the age of 94.
Lord Tebbit died “peacefully at home” late on Monday night, his son William confirmed.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s most loyal cabinet ministers, he was a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s.
He held the posts of employment secretary, trade secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative party chairman before resigning as an MP in 1992 after his wife was left disabled by the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He considered standing for the Conservative leadership after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation in 1990, but was committed to taking care of his wife.
Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit in 1987 after her election victory. Pic: PA
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him an “icon” in British politics and was “one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism”.
“But to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism, which inspired us as he rebuilt his political career after suffering terrible injuries in the Brighton bomb, and cared selflessly for his wife Margaret, who was gravely disabled in the bombing,” she wrote on X.
“He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised. Our nation has lost one of its very best today and I speak for all the Conservative family and beyond in recognising Lord Tebbit’s enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country.
“May he rest in peace.”
Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret stand outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Pic: PA
Tory grandee David Davis told Sky News Lord Tebbit was a “great working class Tory, always ready to challenge establishment conventional wisdom for the bogus nonsense it often was”.
“He was one of Thatcher’s bravest and strongest lieutenants, and a great friend,” Sir David said.
“He had to deal with the agony that the IRA visited on him and his wife, and he did so with characteristic unflinching courage. He was a great man.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage said Lord Tebbit “gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP”.
He was “a great man. RIP,” he added.
Lord Tebbit as employment secretary in 1983 with Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Born to working-class parents in north London, he was made a life peer in 1992, where he sat until he retired in 2022.
Lord Tebbit was trade secretary when he was injured in the Provisional IRA’s bombing in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984.
Five people died in the attack and Lord Tebbit’s wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. She died in 2020 at the age of 86.
Before entering politics, his first job, aged 16, was at the Financial Times where he had his first experience of trade unions and vowed to “break the power of the closed shop”.
He then trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a Meteor 8 jet – before becoming the MP for Epping in 1970 then for Chingford in 1974.
Lord Tebbit during an EU debate in the House of Lords in 1997. Pic: PA
As a cabinet minister, he was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.
His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the black community and the police.
He was frequently misquoted as having told the unemployed to “get on your bike”, and was often referred to as “Onyerbike” for some time afterwards.
What he actually said was he grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father who did not riot, “he got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.
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