LABOUR DOES NOT CARE ABOUT THE WORKING CLASS

Labour’s tax rises will not hit workers’ payslips, the education secretary has promised, as the government prepares to announce one of the most significant budgets in recent history next week

Bridget Phillipson said on Sunday morning that the tax rises being planned by Rachel Reeves would not affect employees’ take-home pay, as ministers struggle to explain what was meant by their manifesto pledge not to increase taxes on “working people”.

The chancellor is expected to announce an increase to employers’ national insurance contributions on Wednesday in a move that could raise between £8.5bn and £20bn.

However, ministers say this would not break the party’s manifesto promise not to increase national insurance because raising employers’ contributions does not count as a tax on working people.

The series of planned tax rises have led to a row over whether Labour is about to break the promises it set out before the election. In its manifesto, the party promised: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase national insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of income tax, or VAT.”

Much of the debate has centred on what Labour meant by “working people”. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, attempted to clarify that last week by saying he used the term for people who earn money through work rather than from assets such as shares or property, though Downing Street later said that people who owned small numbers of shares could count as working people.

The dangerous phrase ‘working people’ is used by all right wing establishment parties to show that in their eyes the working class does not exist and that parents, looking after their children, the ill and the old do not count.