Truss jibes at Starmer over ‘tax and spend’
LIZ Truss drew blood in her first Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday with stinging jibes at Labour’s ‘tax and spend’ agenda.
Speaking at the despatch box for the first time in her premiership, Miss Truss said Sir Keir Starmer’s party was the ‘same old’ Labour – calling for more tax rises just as she ruled out a windfall tax on oil and gas giants.
Miss Truss told the Commons: ‘What I’m about is reducing taxes, getting our economy growing, getting investment, getting new jobs for people right across the country.’
Pledging to take immediate action to help families and firms struggling with the cost of living crunch, the Prime Minister confirmed she would announce a package of energy support today.
Miss Truss said it would give people ‘certainty to make sure that they are able to get through this winter and be able to have the energy supplies and be able to afford it’.
Under the plans, household energy bills will be capped at £2,500 in a move set to cost north of £100billion – while businesses are set to benefit from support worth some £40billion.
However, Sir Keir accused Miss Truss of ‘reheating George Osborne’s failed corporation tax plans, protecting oil and gas profits and forcing working people to pay the bill’.
Miss Truss also used the Commons sparring match to stick the boot into Labour over the party’s lack of female leaders. She was asked by former prime minister Theresa May why all three female PMs had been Conservative. Miss Truss said: ‘It is quite extraordinary isn’t it, that there doesn’t seem to be the ability in the Labour Party to find a female leader or indeed a leader who doesn’t come from north London,’ she said, in reference to both Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Keir, who live in the north of the capital.
To raucous cries from the Tory benches, she added: ‘I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what the issue is.’
Labour has never elected a woman to the top of the party, and has only ever had acting female leaders who were not in government at the time.
Miss Truss’s clash with Sir Keir showed dividing lines on fiscal policy, with the PM deter
‘Same old Labour Party’
mined to scrap planned corporation tax rises.
Sir Keir said: ‘Not only is the Prime Minister refusing to extend the windfall tax, she’s also choosing to hand the water companies polluting our beaches a tax cut. She’s choosing to hand the banks a tax cut. Add it all together and companies that are already doing well are getting a £17billion tax cut while working people pay for the cost of living crisis.’
Miss Truss said the UK cannot ‘tax its way to growth’.
IF Liz Truss suffered from nerves during her first Commons Question Time as Prime Minister, she certainly didn’t show it.
Contrary to the expectations of her critics, her demeanour at the despatch box was confident, her delivery assured, and there was no doubting her passion for Tory values.
When Sir Keir Starmer attacked her over refusing to impose a second windfall tax on energy producers and cancelling planned business tax rises, her riposte was withering. He didn’t understand aspiration or opportunity, or the fact that people wanted to keep more of their own money.
Turning his ‘same old Tories’ jibe on its head, she said: ‘There is nothing new about a Labour leader who is calling for more tax rises. Same old tax and spend.’
But important as this combative performance was for party morale, PMQs is essentially theatre. The real work of government begins today, when Miss Truss announces her plan to freeze energy bills and mitigate the cost of living crunch.
It will be eye-wateringly expensive and incur a massive rise in short-term debt. So it cannot be more than a temporary fix. It must be accompanied by a broad and radical strategy for the better exploitation of domestic supplies, from the North Sea, new nuclear generators and possibly fracking.
Though the Green lobby will howl, we must do all we can to insulate ourselves from global market shocks and the belligerent whim of tyrants such as Vladimir Putin.
But judging from her first full day in office, Liz Truss will not shrink from the formidable challenges ahead. Or from subjecting them to traditional Tory solutions.