Labour has come under fire regarding speculation surrounding its tax plans in the upcoming Budget next week.
The party’s election manifesto said they would not increase taxes on working people and included a commitment not to increase national insurance, income tax or VAT.
Starmer has previously said the Government is “going to keep our manifesto pledges”, amid speculation that Chancellor Rachel Reeves will increase employers’ national insurance contributions.
During this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Shadow Deputy PM Oliver Dowden clashed with Angela Rayner, challenging her to define “working people” in light of Labour’s manifesto pledge.
At PMQ’s Dowden asked the Deputy PM: “There are five million small business owners in this country. Are they working people?”
Rayner replied: “I don’t know how the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister can stand there with a straight face when it was the small businesses, the working people of this country, that paid the price for them crashing the economy, and sending interest rates soaring.”
This comes after the prospective introduction of VAT on private schools has also caused Labour to come under fire for not supporting middle Britain.
GB News host Bev Turner believes that this new tax will mean that “only the super rich” will be sending their children to private schools, severely affecting the working and middle classes.
She said: “That’s a terrible thing. Only the super rich will be able to afford private school, the billionaires! A lot of them living here will be the Chinese, the Russian, the Arabs.
“It won’t be the hard working British people, they won’t be able to afford private school.”
Her fellow co-presenter Andrew Pierce agreed, saying: “When I speak to Labour people about this, they devil up a rictus grin when they talk about this policy, because it reeks of class war envy.”
With that in mind, do you think Labour has declared a class war on middle Britain? Have your say by voting in the poll above.
