IT WAS scorching in the Downing Street garden yesterday as the PM breezed up to the podium just after 10am.
“Sunshine, no rain, no wind”, he smiled. But that was where the good news stopped. The economic outlook he had come to deliver was far from sunny.
At the heart of this speech was a frank warning — tough times lie ahead and the October Budget will be brutal.
“It is going to be painful,” he grimaced, “I’ll have to turn to the country and make big asks of you.”
Although unspoken, the message was clear — sweeping tax rises and spending cuts to fill what Labour claims is a £22billion black hole they inherited.
That is a hard thing for a newly elected Prime Minister to say to a nation still bearing the scars of a cost of living crisis.
Sir Keir said he owed it to voters to be honest. But it leaves him in an awkward spot, economically and politically.
Having ruled out any income tax, VAT, national insurance and corporation tax rises, he has blocked about 80 per cent of all possible revenue raisers.
It has left Chancellor Rachel Reeves scrabbling for other levers to pull while remaining in her iron-clad fiscal rules to bring down borrowing.
While inevitably angering those who are stung, it would give the PM just about enough wriggle room to claim he is honouring his pledge not to raise taxes on working people.
That cannot be said if he starts looking to raise fuel duty.
But it is also a political gamble to ask families to tighten belts — especially after finding money for bumper pay rises for doctors and train drivers.
Where was all of this doom and gloom during the election?
The PM is now heaping the blame entirely on the Tories for wrecking the finances and hiding how bad things were.
He will have to hope families swallow this as they buckle up for a rough winter.
THE PM defended big pay rises to doctors and train drivers while axing winter fuel payments for 10million pensioners.
Sir Keir Starmer said strikes had been hitting the economy — while means-testing the winter fuel payment was a “choice we had to make”.
Asked by The Sun if he now risked spending his premiership playing whack-a-mole with evermore expensive wage claims, Sir Keir said: “I’m going to be really tough about this with the unions, just as I’m being tough with everybody else.”
But pension campaign groups said dumping fuel payments worth up to £300 would create a public health emergency.
Age UK said: “As many as two million pensioners who badly need the money to stay warm will be in serious trouble.”
Simon Francis, of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, added: “The winter fuel payment is about basic fairness for older people facing soaring energy bills.”
LORD Mandelson is being lined up as Britain’s new US ambassador, it was claimed last night.
The New Labour-era Cabinet Minister has been informally advising Sir Keir Starmer for a while but now looks set for the plum role of our man in Washington, the Telegraph reported.
Lord Mandelson was Northern Ireland Secretary under Tony Blair then served as EU Trade Commissioner before returning to Gordon Brown’s government.
Incumbent Dame Karen Pierce is stepping down, but a Downing Street source last night said her successor will not be decided until after the US election on November 5.
