Personal finance expert Martin Lewis has pinpointed the issues the Labour Government has failed to address during its rocky 14 months in power. The consumer journalist warned the UK is in a “really tough economic spot”, adding “there’s a lot of anger and there’s a lot of unhappiness”
Mr Lewis made the comments at the Labour Party Conference, with Sir Keir Starmer going into the four-day event with his party trailing Reform UK in the polls ahead of crunch elections in Scotland, Wales and English counties next year. He said if Sir Keir Starmer and his cabinet had focused on the “100 small things that p*ss people off” when Labour entered office, then the party would be ahead in the polls. Mr Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, then listed off the issues he thinks the Government should have tackled to make itself more popular.
This included energy bills, council tax, student maintenance loans, Carer’s Allowance and ISAs for young people.
“If we’d fixed all of those right now, the Government would be ahead in the polls,” he told the POLITICO Pub at the party conference in Liverpool on Monday.
Sir Keir addressed the conference on Tuesday and put controlling immigration, growing the economy and restoring pride in Britain at the heart of his plan to take on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
The Prime Minister said securing the borders was a “reasonable demand”, but he hit out at people including Mr Farage who cross a “moral line” on the issue.
Sir Keir claimed Mr Farage “doesn’t like Britain” and days earlier, said Reform’s plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain for immigrants legally in the UK as “racist”.
In his response to Sir Keir’s conference speech, Mr Farage said the PM’s language “will incite and encourage the radical left”.
“I’m thinking of Antifa and other organisations like that. It directly threatens the safety of our elected officials and our campaigners, and, frankly, in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder, I think this is an absolute disgrace.”
He said Sir Keir’s speech was “a desperate last throw of the dice from a Prime Minister who is in deep trouble”.
“I now believe that he is unfit to be the Prime Minister of our country,” Mr Faragae said.