THE UK’s future prosperity hinges on boosting economic growth rather than hiking taxes, according to the Labour Party’s national campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden.
He told Camilla Tominey on GB News: “I’ve done lots of interviews during the campaign and been asked lots of questions about tax and the answers don’t change. We’re not going to increase Income Tax, National Insurance, or VAT.
“Nothing in our manifesto requires taxes beyond the other two or three small things that we’ve said. Our central proposition isn’t if we win the election to go into power, thinking about tax, our central proposition is how do we make the economy stronger?
“That debate hasn’t really featured in the election enough. How do we get more investment and how do we build more houses? How do we get more people into work?
“Because the truth is tax here are tax there, which has been a lot of debate on in this election, isn’t really going to change the fortunes of the UK very much, isn’t really going to change the fortunes of individual households very much.
“The only way to do that and the only way to stop us falling further behind similar households in France, Germany and the Netherlands is to have a stronger economy. That’s what’s at the heart of our manifesto, not lots of tax proposals.”
Asked if Labour would try to reverse the Brexit referendum result by stealth, he said: “We don’t want to re-run this argument. We’ve been through a lot since 2016.
“I voted remain in the referendum, but accept the result and the task of leadership now, for whoever wins the election on Thursday, is to make the best future that we can outside the European Union. And that’s what we want to do.
“We don’t want to re-run this argument. Britain’s made its decision. Now I think we can have a good and positive relationship with our neighbours. I think when you see Russia invading Ukraine, you realise we’ve got a lot in common with Western European democracies.”
He said the negative public perception of politicians generally is to blame for the unpopularity of Keir Starmer: “I think faith in politics probably has taken a step back in recent years.
“I don’t think the opposition party is really responsible for that because we haven’t been running the country for 14 years.
“And really, that’s why when it comes to the manifesto that we put forward a lot of people have said to me in interviews like this over the last month or so, why aren’t you promising more, why aren’t you promising to do this, why aren’t you promising to do that?
“The answer is, first of all, is we recognise the situation we will inherit – the country’s in a difficult economic spot and so we wanted to make sure that what we said we would do could be delivered and we’d say exactly how we’d pay for it.”
On transgender rights, he was asked if David Lammy was right to say that men can grow a cervix and said: “I don’t think that’s right.”
