'Raise taxes to fight off Farage', Starmer urged as ex minister warns Reform poses 'existential threat'
4 May 2025, 23:35
Sir Keir Starmer should scrap his pledge not to raise taxes to fend off an “existential” threat from Nigel Farage, according to a former cabinet minister.
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Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary, lashed out at the prime minister over Labour's war on benefits and winter fuel allowance cut in a scathing attack.
She urged Sir Keir to “rip up” Labour’s “self-imposed tax rules”, which mean raising income tax, VAT or national insurance are off limits.
The ex minister wrote that a “serious programme of investment and reindustrialisation” is needed to show voters the government was “fighting on their side”.
It comes after Reform made staggering in gains in the local elections, pickIng up 10 councils and more than 600 seats in Thursday’s poll. Labour lost 180 council seats and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, with Prime Minister saying said he will go “further and faster” with his plans in response to the poor result.
Ms Haigh bashed Sir Keir's response as “alarming”, warning he risks “haemorrhaging votes” to Reform.
Read more: Reform to 'wage war' against net zero 'lunacy' after local elections
“It failed to acknowledge any need to change course but simply committed itself to double down on the plan, whilst haemorrhaging votes to the parties of our left and right,” her piece in the Times reads.
“It is now urgent that we develop a vision and a strategy that is confident in our values, sets the terms of the debate and takes the fight to Reform, rather than letting the fight come to us. That is the only way to hold our perilous coalition together," she added.
The only way this can happen is though an economic reset, she claimed, by "ripping up our self-imposed tax rules and by a serious programme of investment and reindustrialisation."
That's because Mr Farage is "not wooing these voters with a traditionally right-wing offer,” Ms Haigh claimed.
in a separate interview, Ms Haigh said a "changed approach to tax is almost inevitable".
"Without it we’re going to see the government keeping on coming back and making the same type of decisions as they’ve done around welfare on a very regular basis,” she told The Guardian.
“We have an absolute imperative to maintain the balance as we govern. It simply won’t be enough to go back to people at the next general election and ask them to vote for us purely so we can keep the Tories or Reform out.”
Her intervention comes after a wave of Labour MPs hit out at the government for its humiliating performance in this week's elections.
Ian Byrne, the MP for Liverpool West Derby, told LBC's Natasha Devon that it would be "unforgivable" not to adapt after the elections.
Mr Byrne said the government had made some good achievements, but they had been "drowned out" by controversial decisions such as the winter fuel allowance cut."That's caused seething anger," he said.
Richard Burgon, Labour MP for Leeds, has also bashed Sir Keir's reactioN.
He told LBC's Matthew Wright: "The thing that flummoxes me and is flummoxing a lot of people, is this idea that we need to just go further and faster because what we need isn't a pickup in pace by the government.
"What we need is a change in direction, not a change in speed, because in Runcorn on Thursday and elsewhere, time and time again decisions people didn't expect from our government, cutting the winter fuel allowance, the proposed cuts to disability benefits, those are the kinds of issues that have been coming up.
Labour backbencher Emma Lewell said there the Government has made unnecessary choices that have cost the party at the ballot box, and that the party needs a “change of plan” rather than a “plan for change”.
“The Labour Party doesn’t need to lurch right or left, we need to do what we say we will do and do it in line with our core values and principles of social justice and fairness,” she wrote in The Mirror.
South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard warned that patience is “in short supply” in his region and urged Sir Keir to have those voters in mind when they make spending decisions in the summer.
While Doncaster’s Labour mayor Ros Jones was narrowly re-elected, the councillors are now majority Reform.
Labour MP Rachael Maskell called on the Government to scrap winter fuel and welfare policies that she said are pushing voters away, telling BBC Breakfast the party needs to be driven by “a framework of values, which is about protecting people”.
Jo White, the chair of the Red Wall group of Labour MPs, urged Sir Keir to stop “pussyfooting around” and introduce digital ID cards to stop illegal immigration.“He should take a leaf out of Donald Trump’s book by following his instincts and issuing some executive orders,” she wrote in The Telegraph.
The Prime Minister has said he will go “further and faster” with his plans in response to the poor result, while Tory leader Kemi Badenoch apologised to defeated Conservative councillors and pledged to get the party back to being a “credible alternative to Labour”.
