Keir Starmer wants to set expectations early. Speaking at the Resolution Foundation’s economy conference later today, the opposition leader used his speech to emphasise just how little scope he’d have at the start of any Labour government to splash the cash. His party will not ‘turn on the spending taps’, he told an audience of economists and policy analysts. Anyone expecting them to do so is ‘going to be disappointed.’ The speech seemed to deliberately echo the infamous ‘I’m afraid there is no money’ note left for the incoming Tory government by a Labour minister.
Starmer responded to the spending trap laid out in the Autumn Statement last month: where Chancellor Jeremy Hunt used almost all his fiscal headroom to cut taxes rather than boost public sector spending. As a result, the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast a £19 billion hole, as inflation has – and continues – to strip departments of their spending power.
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