Starmer warns of 'painful' budget | Newscast

Vicki hello hello so kir starmer are back with a bang although actually he never went away because his summer holiday got cancelled that is true he unlike also you can dispute whether this was a bang as well has yeah it was more of a I don't know what it was really it was a bit it was a bit downbeat in many ways wasn't it we were sort of laughing as we were all sitting there saying God you know Tony Blair 97 it was a new dawn this is like the dark winter nights are drawing in it was um yeah pretty gloomy definitely trying to manage expectations and just first of all the context of the Rose Garden I mean did he just do it and also people say it's not even the Rose Garden it's just a garden with some roses in it um um to what extent did he address why he was doing it there rather than just it was sunny yeah no he did he did actually deliberately point across and saying you know we're sitting here and also the other interesting thing they were they were members of the public now they were hand pigs they were people he'd met on the campaign Trail so they were sitting in the audience so you know he got a round of applause which of course he doesn't get when it's just us journalists sitting there clever so at one point he did point to that kind of if you remember those photos um of lockdown and Dominic Cummings and uh the prime minister at the time who was of course Boris Johnson sitting there wine and cheese when we were all being told we couldn't meet up and they were working in the garden but with you know Refreshments so he was sort of making that contrast between parties the other parties that were held there during lockdown and him saying this building is now back in the service of the people and that's why he had members of the public there as well so really very pointedly sort of saying that none of this was performative but then actually you know that was pretty much a PR exercise doing some performance yeah um thinking back to like the the him not having his holiday when I watched the speech I was trying to think of sort of a metaphor to sum it up and and I ended up with a holiday one and it was somebody at the hotel breakfast buffet filling their plate with lots of different things except the things from the buffet were various news stories from the last three weeks that he was responding to yes so for example he did a bit about well he did quite a lot on the on the riots and and actually it was interesting that he basically pinned the riots which he says was a bunch of thugs behaving in a criminal manner but he managed to pin it on the previous government yeah I mean there was a lot of that and there has been a lot of that and I think that will continue this you know the idea of the Legacy the blame what they've inherited from the conservatives which is of course is very much disputed by those conservatives um and yes on the riots he he sort of talked about that problem didn't really talk about how you do stop that happening again and but a lot of talk about prison places actually and I think they see that very much as a a sort of a real sort of concrete example if you like of where the previous government in their R has failed because they didn't build enough prisons and that meant that when these riots happened he and other ministers were having to look very carefully at how many prison places there were in order to lock up the riers so you know he wanted to use that as a very clear example example of coming into power and immediately facing this emergency situation and how what had previously happened fed into that and he was also saying that some of the rioter will have made a calculation based on that situation that they could go out commit some disorder and they either wouldn't be prosecuted or if they were prosecuted they wouldn't go to prison because Prison places were so constrained he actually explicitly said people made that calculation in their head yeah I mean that's very difficult to prove isn't it whether people who you know to the streets and and took those actions were actually sitting there thinking oh well I'll probably get away with it I mean you know it's it's hard to prove that isn't it and um I think you know he was very much drawing on his experience as the former head of the crown prosecution service because he of course the last time the riots happened was in that role and was very much instrumental uh to what was going on and has been there before of course but in a different role and then the next item he took from the breakfast buffet of news was um well it was two things it was the big public sector pay settlements but contrasted with the fact that Rachel Reeves basically at the stroke of a pen and this has now gone through or is now going through the official process taking away the winter fuel payment from all pensioners who are not on the pension credit benefit yeah that's right and that was something you know we got a question and that's something I I asked him about because thread through the whole speech was honesty and so there are some people who would feel like we had a very extensive long election camp campaign where there was no mention whatsoever from labor about taking away the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners now again his justification for that is that they didn't know what was coming even though of course they had talked a lot about the conservatives crashing the economy they say that it's much worse and he didn't want to do this he specifically said today I didn't want to do this I didn't want to be a prime minister who was taking the winter fuel allowance away uh but I had to do it and it was interesting because he actually sort of drew a line with having to fix the NHS build more houses fix our schools and saying look pensioners rely on things like that too so it's almost as if like everyone is going to have to you know make some kind of contribution to the pain that's coming and we can hear the Prime Minister saying that in his own words so we have made that difficult decision to mend the public finances so everyone benefits in the long term including pensioners now that is a difficult tradeoff and there will be more to come I won't shy away from making unpopular decisions now if it's the right thing for the country in the long term that's what a government of service means um yeah which brings us then on to yeah the little mini preview we got of the budget which was a preview of kind of the tone of the budget it's going to be hard and there's going to be difficult choices and people will presumably have to pay more in tax acts but not much detail no none at all and again you I sort of said to him and asked him well if you want to be honest can you at least tell us what you might be considering you know to say what you've chosen but they will be you know going through all of the all of these things already so he's talked about being painful talking about the broader shoulders having to Bear the bur burden but also saying you know the big asks from people uh I know it's not going to be popular so he has made pledges of course not to I think they you know the wording was not to put up tax on workers um and not to raise certain taxes like income tax vat but that does leave a lot of other things so it leaves capital gains tax it leaves pension tax relief potentially it leaves inheritance tax there's all sorts of things that they can look at but he's not really shying away from the fact that it is going to be uh incredibly difficult and potentially painful and I think what's interesting here is that we've had a little bit over the summer not much but a little bit from labor MPS about their worries about the winter fuel allowance and there is got to be a big question about can his MPS take the heat you know they've been out of power for a long time they come in they make these difficult decisions potentially and there's going to be you know a lot of criticism and those MPS many of them very new uh will be wondering what's hit them potentially uh and can they withstand that pressure that they might come under you not just for the conservatives but from their own constituents and what did you make of his answer to the question about this so-called cronyism R this is a some claims being made particularly by Michael gove's old special adviser Henry Newman somebody we all know because he's been around in politics for a very long time and he's now very active on social media and has a Blog about how White Hall works and he's been listing all the examples and pushing quite hard about where labor donors or labor supporters have been given positions or passes that get them into Downing Street because they've been doing government work or even have got jobs in the Civil Service H yeah so that was quite interesting he obviously must have expected to be asked about that uh and he was uh and actually his defense was sort of like I want the best people and almost again relating it back to this Legacy idea you know the the rot is so bad and so deep as he would put it that you need the best people in the job to help us you know improve all of that and so then he there was a follow up question and when he was asked well you saying the process doesn't matter the sort of impartiality and all the rest of it he said no I'm not saying the process doesn't matter but want the people and then the other R which is about Lord Ally who's a huge donor to the labor party and to skama personally uh in his role uh him having that pass and he he just really did dismiss that and say look Lord Ally was helping us with the transition into government he was coming into Downy Street for a short while and then we took the pass away and he's no longer doing it so you know he's trying to bat that away even though there are some who are obviously trying to to push at that because he is talking about raising standards public standards about trust about honesty so of course there will be many in the conservative family who will be wanting to try and and push him on that and what did you make of this whole phenomenon of kir starmer doing a sort of back to school everyone press conference because I feel actually that's a thing that used to happen I can imagine Tony Blair doing that yeah I mean he obviously wants to get his side of the story in doesn't he I mean he's got of course once you're prime minister you've got uh you've got the ability to do that you can summon the press to Downing Street and you can you know summon invite members of the public and then you can stand there and you can put forward your case and he might be trying to take advantage of the fact that yes of course Richi sunak is still leader of the conservative party uh but you know they're in the middle of their own leadership contest so maybe you know they're not firing on all cylinders at the moment so he just wants to get that in and I think the people around him feel that this is really what David Cameron did you know he came in there was of course the coalition but that austerity narrative was very much set against look what labor have left us look that note saying there was no money left to spend and they use that for a very long time and there are people around labor who think they lost the next election after 2010 because of that and they're almost trying to do the same thing now and also starma is doing that thing that all new Prime Ministers try to do which is to not become a commentator and various advisers to former prime ministers have said this as well that they all advise them to not just be somebody who pops up every day giving their reaction to whatever in the news that day and actually you try to control events and you pop up strategically to be in charge and all prime ministers try that but they all get sucked into end up commentating on the news because sort of end up looking to them to to to address whatever pops up that day so wonder how long that strategy will last but equally because that's starma strategy at the moment we haven't really seen very much of him kind of visibly over the last few weeks even though he didn't go on holiday I know and I that's what's interesting I mean of course the the fact that the riots happened meant that maybe he you know there was a bit more than you know you would have expected uh but yeah it's a difficult one isn't it you know he he you don't want to be there all the time because in some ways people then just think oh you know there there he is again and you don't take notice you want people to sit up and notice when the Prime Minister uh speaks but then on the other hand you know Believe It or Not Adam some people don't sit and watch and listen to this all the time especially in August so maybe you do have to get out there more if your prime minister to try and get your message across also um talking about people who have not been very visible I just hadn't seen or heard of rishy sunak for ages and then I was on Instagram and he posted some pictures of being at the the country show in his constituency and then his wife posted a picture of them and their two daughters going for a walk and what looked like I don't know Spain or California it did not look like Yorkshire um and it with with the c and her caption said something like really nice to get family time back and you're like o just is a reminder of what what what a tll that job takes I think he was spotted in California at one point over the holiday wasn't he um but you know I think some people are surprised that he you know has decided or agreed to stay in the job for for as long as he has because he is going to be there isn't he until the end of October so maybe a holiday now and again is No Bad Thing and he is still doing the job because if you then close down Instagram and go on X from known as Twitter there's a classic rishy sunak opposition leader tweet saying kir starmer speech today was the clearest indicator of what labor has been planning to do all along Dash raise your taxes yes so I think that is definitely going to be the the fight back from them which is that labor are always going to do this we always know they do this they always put up taxes and they are just using other things as an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway so that will definitely be the line from you know all the Tory leadership candidates I'm sure Vicki thank you very much for that jog around the doning street garden thank you very much newscast newscast from the BBC e e e e e e e e