Labour: PM 'self indulgent'

A very good morning to you, analyst. Thanks so much for talking to us. I wondered if I could start off by just asking you the announcement we got overnight that a major Tory donor and four Tory MPs have been awarded honours on the recommendation of the Prime Minister of Rishi Sunak. What do you make of that? Good morning. Well, this seems to be either the action of an incredibly arrogant Prime Minister who just doesn’t care what the public thinks, or someone who’s effectively demo Pappy not thinking he’s going to stay in that role as Prime Minister. Really, I think the public are going to be quite appalled by this news today. Why would they be appalled? I mean, Labour governments have given out honours before. Are you saying that Labour would reform the honour system? Well, Labour has been clear. We believe that actually honours should be there to reward people who’ve made that contribution to our public life. And I think the concern here is we have a man who at the time last January had given the biggest ever donation to the Conservative Party that was £5,000,000 last January, and now he’s being honoured by the Prime Minister. You know, I think there are big questions for Rishi Sunak to be answering yet again today. And as I say, it seems to indicate that either he doesn’t care what the public thinks or he believes he’s simply on the way out as the Prime Minister, so he doesn’t need to worry about this anymore. They, they would say this particular individual is being honoured for his charitable works. Well, I think people can just look at the reality here. As I said last year, last January, the biggest EFFORT donor for the Conservatives at that stage, I think they’ll make their own minds up on this, quite frankly. OK, so will you rule out that under a Labour government no big lane Labour donors would get any kind of honour? Well, we believe, as I said, the honour system should be used as a means of rewarding that effort, those achievements for our country overall. We think that that means, sorry, just to be clear. So does that mean big Labour donors will not get any honours under a Labour government? Is that what you’re saying? There shouldn’t be an automatic pass through from somebody who’s made a huge donation to a political party then being rewarded in that manner. You know, we have situational work. There are philanthropists, if I can, sorry if I can finish, there are philanthropists who give money to a whole range of different causes. But this is unique because we’re talking here about the biggest at the time, the biggest EFFORT donor to the Conservatives last January, now being rewarded. We’ve also, of course, had the situation with Frank Hester, a donor to the Conservative Party was found to have made truly appalling racist and misogynistic remarks in the Conservative Party, not distancing themselves from that. I’m afraid. This is a Conservative Party problem, and it’s really dragging all of our politics into disrepute at the moment. Let me just ask you as well about Angela Rayner, if I may. Labour’s deputy leader, of course, still under pressure over the sale of her house over a decade ago or about a decade ago. But the police now saying that they’re going to reassess their decision not to investigate, they’re going to look again at that. She says she’s done nothing wrong, but she won’t make her tax advice public. Why not? Would it not make sense for her to make it public? And then perhaps the questions would go away. I’ve got complete confidence in Angela Rayner. I’m really proud that she’s our deputy leader, and that kind of confidential advice that’s provided to an individual would not normally be made public. You haven’t found, for example, Conservative politicians making that public. But you know, I have to say for many members of the public when they’re looking at this and the Conservative Party apparently fixated on the personal finances of one individual, many people watching this will be saying, well hang on a minute, what about my family finances? What about the cost of living that’s hammering my family? What about the money I don’t have in my back pocket? Why don’t we have a Conservative party in government that’s focused on family finances rather than what seems to be petty politicking about one individual politicians, finances? But it it must be frustrating for you and others in the Labour Party to see her on the front pages day after day. And if publishing this document would make that go away, they might say that. Isn’t that the simplest thing to do? Well, actually Angela Rayner was yesterday at the core of our programme to make sure that we’re delivering economic growth in every community up and down the country because of the impact of that cost of living in the that we see up and down the nation. And Angela has been leading uh Labour’s policy development in that area to make sure that we have local economic plans, that we have longer term financial settlements for local authorities. She’s been doing a brilliant job on that. And I actually think when you speak to people on the doorstep, which I do all of the time up and down the country, you know, they’re not particularly interested, as I said, in kind of petty politicking questions. What they’re interested in is what political parties are going to do for the money they’ve got in their pockets, for the crumbling schools, for the hospitals under pressure. Labour’s got a plan and Angela Rayner’s been setting out that plan to set these things right. I’m afraid we don’t have that coming from the Conservatives. OK, And and we will talk about council tax. I know that’s something that you wanted to talk about today. You’re claiming today that people are better off if they live in an area that’s run by a Labour council. But doesn’t that depend on how you calculate it? I mean you had the same argument with the Tories last year where you both came up with different calculations and both of you claimed that living in in in councils run by your respective parties was was the cheaper option. Well actually viewers can check this out for themselves if they want to. If they look at the council tax figures for 2024 to 25, they can see that on average people who live in labour run areas are paying 276 lbs less per household than if they live in areas that are not labour run. And that also feeds through into the policy related to different bands as well. So for people who are living in band D properties, for example, they’re paying on average 38 lbs. Yes. Why are we talking about this? We’re talking about it because even given the 14 years of economic mismanagement that we’ve seen under the Conservatives, all of those pressures on local authorities, even with all of that we see that Labour run areas are the areas where people have more money in their pockets as a result of better focus on public services and on having those signed finances. But how powerful a message is this for Labour to be pushing given that Burming Council is run by labour and council tax there is going up by 21% over the next two years? Well, we’re seeing very substantial council tax raises actually across the board. I mean the government has ensured that on average people are paying £300 more on their council tax because of their national policy. So everyone’s paying more council tax under the Conservatives. They’re paying lots more other forms of tax as well. In fact, taxes overall have risen, we’ve seen 25 times under the Conservatives recently. So everyone is paying more and they’re getting less. And I think that clearly is something that people up and down the country can feel in their pockets. They’re very concerned about it and they want to see a party with a different approach, and that’s the Labour Party. OK. Well, Annalise, thoughts. We appreciate your time this morning. Thanks so much for talking to us today. Thank you.