Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
The IFS (The Institute for Fiscal Studies) have today warned that 250,000 children will be hit by the two-child benefit cap next year, rising to an extra half a million by 2029. Green Party Co-Leader, Adrian Ramsay, responded saying,
“Greens have unequivocally pledged to scrap the two-child benefit cap in our fully costed manifesto.
“Today I am urging the Labour Party to show real strength and conviction and join us in making this pledge.
“This one decision could lift 250,000 children out of poverty.
“The power to do this will be in Labour’s hands.
“But I want to be very clear.
“If they fail to do this, elected Green MPs will not let this rest.
“We will push them every day of the next parliament demanding that they do what is right.
“That is what a Green vote will enable – voices in parliament to keep Labour honest on these important issues.”
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer at the Mornflake Stadium, home to Crewe Alexandra while on the General Election campaign trail, June 13, 2024
From muzzling Palestinian rights to embracing austerity and outsourcing the NHS, Labour’s ‘tough choices’ always seem to hurt normal people while sparing wealthy donors — that’s why I am running to unseat Keir Starmer on July 4
…[T]he Labour Party launched its election manifesto — a dispiriting Thatcherite promise to continue endless austerity, soaring inequality and forever wars.
I announced my bid to become the independent MP for Holborn and St Pancras three weeks ago. Then, I was convinced that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party would offer little to improve the lives of this constituency’s amazing and diverse communities, or meaningfully restrain Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Having read this manifesto, I am more convinced than ever.
Starmer’s election campaign has traded on a series of stock phrases, all of which are profoundly misleading. Starmer promises to bring about “change,” but repeats tired economic shibboleths of the George Osborne variety.
He also claims to have remade the party “in the service of the working people.” In fact, the party is financially reliant on donations from big business and billionaires and its MPs rake in donations from the private-sector companies who circle the NHS.
The party’s long-feted New Deal for Working People is so disappointing that the party’s largest affiliated union, Unite, has refused to endorse the Labour Party manifesto.
But the most galling of all of the current Starmerisms is his invocation of “tough choices.” Starmer deploys the line to explain why the country cannot afford to pull half a million children out of poverty by ending the two-child benefit cap: a decision now confirmed by the manifesto.
Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, Starmer sadly explains, has made it impossible for the sixth-richest country in human history to lift children out of poverty at a cost little under £2 billion a year, a relatively measly sum in a country with a GDP of £2,274 trillion.
As the Labour Party manifesto makes clear, there have been plenty of hard choices made by the party — but all of them to the detriment of the poor and to the benefit of the mega-rich and big business.
Starmer makes the “tough choice” not to substantially increase funding the NHS, to end child poverty or reverse the swingeing cuts of the last decade; but only because he fails to make the “tough choice” to tax billionaires marginally more, even though the 10 richest people in the country are now richer than they have ever been.
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I’m especially angry that the Labour Party, like the Tories, has promised to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP: a real-term £7bn a year increase by 2029. This is almost double the entire £4.7bn a year the party intends to spend on its Green Prosperity Plan to tackle the imminent existential threat of climate change.
What sort of security does this really buy? The party’s offer on Palestine is, frankly, an outrage; the manifesto speaking out of both sides of its mouth. So while it recognises that “Palestinian statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people,” it then makes Palestinian statehood contingent on a meaningless word salad.
“We are committed to recognising a Palestinian state as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign state.”
So much for an inalienable right, which requires Israel to feel “safe” before Palestinians get statehood — just as Israeli leaders claim that Israel will only feel safe when Gaza is cleansed of its citizens because there are “no uninvolved.”
This offer significantly dilutes the party’s previous commitment to recognising Palestinian statehood on the first day of government — something first brought in by Ed Miliband, appearing in the 2017 and 2019 manifestos. If there was any hope that Labour would be any better than the Tories on Gaza once in power, this should dispel it once and for all.
Both the Lib Dems and the Green Party, by comparison, have committed to immediately recognising Palestine. The Labour Party now joins the ignominious company of the Tories and Reform in refusing to do so.
There have been six prime ministers since this country last made sustained progress on reducing poverty
Nearly one million people in the UK are only £10 a week away from poverty, a study has found, in what has been called a “stain on the moral conscience of our nation”.
Analysis from poverty charity Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has revealed that alongside the estimated 14.2 million people in poverty in the UK, further millions are “teetering on the edge” and unable to afford essentials.
The JRF’s research found that just under a million people, including 200,000 children, are now within £10 a week from the poverty line.
An additional 3.2 million people in the UK – equivalent to the population of Wales – are only £40 a week from deep poverty.
The charity added that seven million households across the country had gone without essentials, like showers, toiletries or adequate clothing, in the last six months – or had gone hungry, or cut or skipped meals in the last 30 days.
For those already in poverty, large numbers are close to “deep” or “very deep” poverty lines, meaning they are living on incomes of less than 50% or 40% of the UK average.
Around six million people were reported as living in very deep poverty in 2022/23, which is 1.5 million more than two decades ago.
Politicians are missing a ‘level of urgency’ on poverty
The JRF’s CEO Paul Kissack called on the government to act on rising poverty levels, as well as those “teetering on the edge” of poverty, telling whoever wins the general election on 4 July to “make reversing this dismal trend a priority”.
“There have been six prime ministers since this country last made sustained progress on reducing poverty,” he explained, referencing when poverty last fell consistently in the UK, between 1999/2000 and 2004/2005 under Tony Blair.
“During that time we’ve seen a sustained rise in the number of people in deep poverty, with hardship and destitution growing even faster.”
He added: “Our political leaders must be specific and ambitious about how they will tackle poverty. But so far there hasn’t been anything like the level of urgency from either Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer that we need to see. Pointing to future growth as a panacea just won’t cut it.
“Tonight’s (4 June) debate is a chance for both leaders to set out their plans and demonstrate they are serious about addressing hardship. Failure to act is a political and moral choice ≠ and one they should expect to be judged on.”
📊 Our latest #UKPoverty report launched this morning.
🔍 14.4 million people were living in poverty in 2021/22 – and our analysis shows that millions of people would need thousands of pounds just to escape poverty.
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer and shadow defence secretary John Healey at the Fusilier Museum in Bury in Greater Manchester, while on the General Election campaign trail, June 3, 2024
BRITAIN will be “fit to fight” under Labour, party leader Sir Keir Starmer said today in a renewed commitment to militarism.
The Labour leader also toughened up his commitment to spending far more on arms, saying that under Labour the military budget would aim to reach 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product “as soon as possible.”
And he both pledged to keep the Trident nuclear weapons system, building four new nuclear-armed submarines with one always ready to launch missiles, and that he would be ready as prime minister to use it.
“The most important thing is that I voted in favour of a nuclear deterrent,” Sir Keir said.
“And my commitment to the nuclear deterrent is absolute.
“Britain will be fit to fight within the first year of a Labour government.
“We will carry out a new Strategic Defence Review. We are absolutely committed to spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence as soon as possible.”
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Jeremy Corbyn, fighting for Islington North as an independent, said: “Nuclear weapons are a profound and existential threat to humanity. Instead of investing in weapons of mass destruction, we should be investing in our schools, hospitals and housing to ensure everyone can lead a happy and healthy life.
“That is what real security means.”
Independent candidate Andrew Feinstein, who is challenging Sir Keir in his own north London constituency, warned that “every single taxpayer’s pound spent on weapons is a pound not spent on our crumbling schools, on reducing NHS waiting lists, on tackling the housing crisis, spiralling rents and the inability of hard-working families to pay the bills.
“Nearly 40 per cent of children in this constituency are living in poverty. That’s over 12,000 children.
“Yet Keir Starmer continually tells us he can’t commit to money for them, just money for more bombs and endless wars.”
‘We need our politicians to set out how they will bring an end to this relentless reality of hardship in the general election campaign.’
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has called on all politicians to urgently address the reality of years-long hardship for families on low incomes.
The call was made following research conducted by the anti-poverty charity which found that the bottom 20 percent of low-income households are facing the same levels of hardship as they were last year, despite inflation falling.
The findings of the Savanta survey of 4,092 adults in the UK in low-income households were scaled by the JRF to population level.
From May 2022 to May 2024, the number of households going without essentials, such as showers, heating, and adequate clothing, ranged from 6.9 million to 7.3 million. Around 5 million households continue to go hungry, skip meals and cut back on food.
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On May 24, during his general election campaign launch in Scotland, Keir Starmer said the party will not be able to afford to scrap the two-child benefit cap if Labour wins the next general election.
The policy was introduced by the Tories in 2017, and prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for third or subsequent children. It is said to be one of the biggest drivers of rising child poverty – up from 3.6 million children below the poverty line in 2010/11 to 4.2 million in 2021/22.
Starmer said that while he was committed to ending child poverty he would not make promises he couldn’t afford. The announcement caused disquiet among senior Labour politicians. Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, said he should promise that “when there is the headroom to do something, this clearly should be at the front of the queue.”
