Louise Haigh says Labour’s ‘unpopular decisions overshadowing the good ones’
Ms Haigh said Labour should ‘properly explore’ a tax on the wealthy as an alternative to ‘cutting money from the people who can least afford it’.
Louise Haigh said Labour’s “unpopular decisions are overshadowing the good ones” as the former transport secretary called for the party to explore a wealth tax to woo back voters following Reform UK’s success in the local elections.
Labour and the Conservatives are under pressure to reverse their parties’ fortunes after Reform picked up 10 councils and more than 600 seats in last week’s polls.
Reform leader Nigel Farage, whose party also gained an MP in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, hailed the results as the end of two-party politics.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday acknowledged his Government needed to “explain the decisions that we’ve taken” after a “disappointing” set of election results, but his press secretary said the Government will not be “blown off course” in response.
Sir Keir has faced calls from his own MPs to change tack, with Ms Haigh, who resigned as a Cabinet minister in November, among those pushing for a new direction.
On Sunday, she wrote in The Times that welfare reforms and the loss of winter fuel payments were “totemic” for many voters, and called on Sir Keir to rip up tax rules to get voters onside.
Ms Haigh echoed those comments on Tuesday, telling BBC Newsnight: “I don’t think we can underestimate how catastrophic those results were last week for the Labour Party… people don’t really feel that we’re taking the action to address the issues that matter, whether that be on the cost of living, the public services or on the economy more widely, and that’s very frustrating.
“I think the unpopular decisions are overshadowing the good ones. I think this Labour government has a lot to offer, whether it be the Employment Rights Bill, the increase in the minimum wage, the massive investment in our NHS, but people have heard the winter fuel allowance and the welfare cuts overwhelmingly.”
Ms Haigh said Labour should “properly explore” a tax on the wealthy as an alternative to “cutting public spending and cutting money from the people who can least afford it”.
She told the BBC: “There are other options on the table be it a land tax, be it proper reform of council tax that hasn’t been reformed since the ’90s.
“We just cannot continue down this path that means, as I say, we keep coming and raiding those people that can least afford it.”
Her comments come after Welsh First Minister Baroness Eluned Morgan said on Tuesday the decision to means-test the previously universal benefit was “something that comes up time and again” as she called for a “rethink”.
The Guardian reported that, while a full restoration of the universal winter fuel payment was unlikely, the Government was considering whether to increase the £11,500 threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the allowance.
But such a move has been rejected by the Prime Minister, partly because the payment is now aligned with eligibility for pension credit and widening access to that would wipe out any savings from the policy.
The decision last July to restrict the winter fuel payment to the poorest pensioners was intended to save around £1.5 billion a year, with more than nine million people who would have previously been eligible losing out.
Cabinet ministers acknowledged the winter fuel payment decision had hit the party at the ballot box.
Asked whether the cut had been part of Labour’s poor electoral performance, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the PA news agency: “I think that has been a feature.
“I think the Prime Minister himself has said that and we’re not sugar-coating those results, they’re very challenging for us.”
