Keir Starmer says Rachel Reeves never lied about the budget mess after the Treasury and OBR got into a fight over whether public finances actually got worse. The prime minister claims tax hikes were always inevitable despite weeks of noise about potential income tax increases that never happened, and he defended dumping the two-child benefit cap while speaking at a London nursery.
The OBR chair told a parliamentary committee that nothing major had changed in the fiscal picture after late October except for scrapped welfare cuts, which contradicts Treasury claims about a massive shortfall. Reports show Reeves hinted at breaking Labour's income tax pledge in early November, but then briefings suggested improved forecasts killed the tax hike plan, even though the OBR confirmed no such improvement happened.
Starmer blamed a productivity review for forcing revenue increases and says he's backing all recommendations from an economist's nuclear sector review, which found Britain's planning system makes it the world's priciest place to build nuclear plants.
The OBR chair told a parliamentary committee that nothing major had changed in the fiscal picture after late October except for scrapped welfare cuts, which contradicts Treasury claims about a massive shortfall. Reports show Reeves hinted at breaking Labour's income tax pledge in early November, but then briefings suggested improved forecasts killed the tax hike plan, even though the OBR confirmed no such improvement happened.
Starmer blamed a productivity review for forcing revenue increases and says he's backing all recommendations from an economist's nuclear sector review, which found Britain's planning system makes it the world's priciest place to build nuclear plants.
