The inevitable truth about Labour and tax

Heard the one about the student who swears blind they’ve never had a drink, drugs nor sex? Seems unlikely so you challenge them … and they confess: “There is one thing… I sometimes tell lies”.

Having worked in No10 for Boris Johnson, I’m painfully aware of the consequences for a politician of being deemed untrustworthy, but he isn’t standing in this election so I won’t list all the important promises he kept in power if you agree not to replay that stuck record. Let’s focus instead on the man the bookies say is now 1-33 favourite to be the next prime minister.

Keir Starmer seems straight, boringly so in that twisted way personal weaknesses are turned into strengths when it fits the dominant narrative of the time. But is he? I’m not talking about his shifty response to the beer and curry night he was photographed enjoying in Durham while attacking the government over partygate.

I’m not even pondering the professional reality of a career at the Bar — where you are paid (handsomely) to make the case for a client whether you think they are guilty or not. Based on what they call the “cab rank” principle, barristers pride themselves on being able to argue either side of a case, regardless of what their heart and conscience may tell them is the truth.

Having thought hard about being a barrister myself I appreciate that even scumbags deserve due process and someone has to represent them. I won’t hold that against him, but it does explain why he was so at ease five years ago telling us repeatedly that Jeremy Corbyn would make “a great prime minister”. His professional modus operandi is to say whatever it takes to advance his cause.

To his credit, Starmer has recently kicked Corbyn out of the party, and I’m not blind to the significant overhaul he has presided over in a relatively short period at the helm. So this is not a point about political positioning but integrity.

Starmer was perfectly entitled to change his mind about Corbyn, but that’s not what happened. A man who will soon have his finger on the nuclear button and his hands on the key levers of our economy has basically acknowledged that he didn’t believe what he told us, time and time again, at the last election because it wasn’t true. I don’t drink, smoke nor cheat. I just sometimes lie, which begs the question can we trust what he tells us now, not least on tax.

As an experienced and successful barrister he’s cunningly done a little plea bargaining ahead of polling day. Sure we’ll put up taxes, to the tune of a very specific £8.6 billion, levied on non-doms, tax avoiders and the parents of privately- educated children. That is clearly fine for the majority of the population, because they are not in any of those categories.

Then there’s a firm promise, a “triple lock” no less, that neither income tax, national insurance nor VAT will go up. To a jury, in court perhaps, that would sound pretty exhaustive, but it’s not.

There are countless means by which a chancellor can pick your pocket without touching those headline rates. Gordon Brown was a master of it when Labour were last in power.