Is Labour the party of sleaze and lies? Let's start with the sleaze. Chancellor Rachel Reeves took £600 worth of free tickets to see a concert by Sabrina Carpenter, who, ironically, has a song called Buy Me Presents.
Let's have a little look at what we think Rachel Reeves' income might be per year. Today, it was announced that MP salaries are rising by 2.8 per cent to around £94,000 a year.
As Chancellor, she reportedly receives roughly £67,000 a year. On top of that, she and her husband, a senior civil servant, reportedly make £74,000 a year as landlords, and his salary is reported as being as much as £174,000.
So, that is a combined total of somewhere in the region of £402,000 a year. So, she still takes freebies, does she? Well, of course, it was all for security reasons.
Patrick Christys shared his views on Labour's latest freebie row
GB NEWS
What? You couldn’t pay for those tickets? Oh, come on. But her own colleagues have had enough of that, and I’m not surprised, really. Cabinet minister Heidi Alexander slapped Reeves down this morning.
The Chancellor has already made cuts for pensioners, cuts for farmers, cuts for the disabled. And today it’s been revealed that she’s about to cut £500 million from state schools.
This is after her VAT raid on private schools has forced some of them to close. More sleaze. Now, Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, randomly went to Ethiopia. The trip cost the taxpayer £20,000.
There is no good reason why she needed to be there, but here we go. It turns out Ms Rayner asked if she could go on a taxpayer-funded private safari trip while she was there, and civil servants had to tell her that wasn’t really appropriate.
This is from the woman who jokingly tells a story about how the Prime Minister invited her round to his Number Ten flat, and when he left the room, she just opened a bottle of whisky and helped herself.
It turned out that was a precious gift from a friend's dad. I mean, who does that? What kind of person just comes round to your house and opens a bottle of whisky and helps themselves when you’re not in the room? Oh, sorry, a raging socialist.
Now, of course, we’ve got the mistruths as well. Forget the little things like whether or not the Business Secretary was actually a solicitor, whether or not the Chancellor actually worked as an economist, or whether the Prime Minister deliberately represented foreign Islamist terrorists.
Just the little stuff. Anyway, Keir Starmer reportedly told 25 porky pies in just half an hour at last week’s Prime Minister's Questions—25.
These include things like ignoring the fact that Labour’s new Employment Rights Bill imposes £5 billion of cuts onto businesses, including 67 per cent of small businesses, which will now probably close or at least stop hiring new staff. He said the Tories opposed raising the minimum wage.
That is not true. The Conservatives did not oppose the rise of the minimum wage, and the Tories actually raised the minimum wage by 72 per cent since 2010.
Rachel Reeves has accepted tickets to see a Sabrina Carpenter gig
PA
Starmer says that he’s investing in policing. Police forces say they’re actually going to have to cut the number of police officers. Starmer said we’re speeding up new infrastructure projects, slashing red tape, and getting Britain building. The reality? He’s created 27 new quangos, £5 billion a year in new regulation, and cut housing targets in cities.
But while we’re on housing, another thing they’ve been very vague about is who is going to live in these new houses. More on that later, by the way. But no doubt, there will be foreigners and asylum seekers.
The Prime Minister said we’ve announced the largest defence increase since the Cold War. Not true. He’s confirmed £6 billion worth of funding but claimed that it would be £13 billion. Conceivably, Prime Minister Keir Starmer could have to come back to Parliament to correct the record 25 times based on last week’s PMQs alone.
On Wednesday, the Chancellor will stand up and announce a spring statement that may very well make you and everyone you know poorer.
And just think about this: it is staggering how easily mistruths roll off the Prime Minister’s tongue. It is astonishing how bad the stench of sleaze is around this Labour government. Let’s go.
