Reform threat presents us with 'fight of our lives', admits top minister
Reform threat presents us with 'fight of our lives', admits top minister
Sir Keir Starmer sent his chief cabinet "fixer" to attempt to calm down jittery Labour MPs in a mutinous mood after last week's elections drubbing by Reform.
But instead of calming nerves, cabinet office minister Pat McFadden warned Labour were now facing "the fight of our lives" against Nigel Farage and his party.
Politics latest: Farage urged to suspend new councillor
Rebel MPs claimed Mr McFadden, who spoke to up to 100 Labour MPs in a Commons committee room for an hour, was acting as a "human shield" for the embattled prime minister.
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertisement
The showdown came as the fury of Labour MPs over winter fuel payment cuts reached a crescendo, after Sir Keir emphatically rejected demands for a U-turn.
The emergency meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, called at just a few hours' notice, was officially billed by the party's high command as a briefing on their "plan for change".
But it was also intended to head off a mutiny by Labour MPs after shock victories by Reform UK last week in county council polls, mayoral elections and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election.
No sign of a winter fuel U-turn
Some Labour MPs were privately critical of Sir Keir for not facing his backbench critics. Others stayed away, claiming the meeting was pointless because the government was not listening to their concerns.
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertisement
As a result, many of the party's most high-profile rebels on winter fuel payments, benefit cuts and other issues were absent. Veteran left-winger Diane Abbot attended but left before the end, refusing to talk to journalists.
Many of those attending were younger MPs elected last July and so the mood was not as acrimonious as the leadership might have feared. Mr McFadden was applauded at the end of the meeting.
Speaking with Treasury ministers Darren Jones and James Murray alongside him but no Rachel Reeves, who was visiting Scotland, Mr McFadden gave no hint of concessions on controversial policies.
Read more:
How Farage is flirting with Labour's loyal voters
The choice facing Labour in face of Reform threat
'Battle for the future'
Instead, he launched an attack on Mr Farage's Reform, which senior cabinet ministers acknowledge is now a real threat to Labour and may become the party's main rivals.
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertisement
According to a government source present at the meeting, Mr McFadden began his speech by saying: "The big point I want to make to you is that a new fight is taking shape.
"It's a fight between our values and a nationalist politics of the right. It's a battle for the very future and the heart and soul of our country."
Mr McFadden was said to have criticised Dame Andrea Jenkyns, the new mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, who in her victory speech vowed Reform would "reset Britain to its glorious past".
'We have to win'
"That is not our project, and it won't be our project," Mr McFadden said, as he said Labour was focused on the country's "glorious future".
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertisement
He added: "Labour is always at its best when we look to the future. This is the fight of our lives, this is the generational fight in this new political era.
"I want to tell you we have to take on this new fight for the future - and we have to win."
Mr McFadden addressed Labour MPs after Sir Keir dismayed many Labour MPs in a clash with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch at PMQs by refusing to admit he was wrong to remove winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Merseyside Reform candidate removed as social media posts surface week before election
A Reform UK candidate has been expelled after "unacceptable" comments surfaced on social media. Reform UK confirmed it had removed Irene Davidson, who was due to stand as a candidate in the Blundellsands by-election taking place next Thursday, June 19. In recent days posts on Ms Davidson's X account had been re-shared on the social media platform by other users highlighting the language used in them. A spokesperson for Reform told the ECHO the social media account had not been disclosed to the party's vetting team. In a previous post by the Sefton branch of the party, Ms Davidson was listed as campaign manager for the branch. Ms Davidson's X account has now been deleted from the social media platform. READ MORE: Woman found dead in car READ MORE: I lost 7 stone on weight loss jabs I don't care about my 'Mounjaro face' A Reform UK spokesman said: "Ms Davidson failed to disclose her social media account to the vetting team. As a result of her unacceptable comments she was swiftly expelled from the party and support for her candidacy has been withdrawn. "Reform UK is completely opposed to any form of discrimination." For the latest news and breaking news visit Get all the big headlines, pictures, analysis, opinion and video on the stories that matter to you. Join the Liverpool ECHO Breaking News and Top Stories WhatsApp community to receive the latest news straight to your phone by clicking here. Don't miss the biggest and breaking stories by signing up to the Echo Daily newsletter here Try the Liverpool Echo Premium app and get the first month free
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Reeves announces £6 billion to provide millions of NHS tests and procedures
Rachel Reeves has announced a £6 billion investment to speed up tests and treatment within the NHS, after setting out huge year-on-year rises in the health service's budget. New scanners, ambulances and urgent treatment centres are among the things which the additional cash will pay for, with the aim of providing up to four million more tests and procedures over the next five years. The announcement comes after the Chancellor put NHS funding at the heart of her spending review on Wednesday, raising its budget in a move worth £29 billion a year. This comes, however, at the expense of other areas of public spending. The new £6 billion funding will help to meet the Government's target of reducing NHS waiting lists in England, the Chancellor claimed. 'Over a decade of underinvestment from the previous government put the NHS on its knees, with people across the country unable to get the care they need. We are investing in Britain's renewal, and we will turn that around,' Ms Reeves said. She added: 'Part of our record investment will deliver four million tests, scans and procedures, so hard-working people can get the healthcare they and their families need. 'There is no strong economy without a strong NHS, and we'll deliver on our Plan for Change to end the hospital backlog, improve living standards and get more money in people's pockets.' The latest spending commitment will help patients get access to diagnostic scans and treatment in places such as shopping centres and high streets, speeding up their diagnoses. The Government hopes this will help to cut NHS waiting lists, meeting Labour's goal of ensuring the health service carries out 92% of routine operations within 18 weeks. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: 'Since taking office we have been relentless in our drive to cut waiting times for patients, delivering over 3.6 million extra elective care appointments and reducing the overall waiting list by over 200,000. 'The £6 billion investment we are announcing today will generate millions more vital diagnostic tests, scans and procedures for patients across the country.' On Wednesday evening, Ms Reeves said the Government was 'confident' it could meet its pledge to reduce waiting lists after giving the NHS a 3% annual increase in funding at the spending review. Some health leaders are, however, sceptical that the Government will meet its target, despite the funding boost provided at the spending review. Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents all health organisations, warned 'difficult decisions will still need to be made as this additional £29 billion won't be enough to cover the increasing cost of new treatments, with staff pay likely to account for a large proportion of it'. He added: 'So, on its own, this won't guarantee that waiting time targets are met.' Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of the King's Fund charity, said: 'The Chancellor said she wants the public to have an NHS there when they need it. 'It is hard to see how all the things she mentions: faster ambulance times, more GP appointments, and adequate mental health services and more can be met on this settlement alone. 'Particularly when large parts of this additional funding will be absorbed by existing rising costs, such as the higher cost of medicines, which are currently being negotiated, and covering staff pay deals.'
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
The charts that show why Reeves's spending plans are a fantasy
Rachel Reeves claims she is investing in the country's Chancellor was cheered on by her front benches as she announced more money for the NHS, defence and schools in a move she boasted would lead to 'a national renewal'. In some senses, there were few surprises on Wednesday. We already knew how much Reeves had to dole out in her maiden spending review. The NHS gobbled up most of the money, with day-to-day spending on the Department of Health and Social Care growing by an average of 2.8pc a year over the forecast period. Defence spending has also received a significant boost as pressure from Nato mounts. Other departments, notably the Home Office, were squeezed as Reeves sought to make the sums add up. But while the numbers may tally on paper, economists are already questioning whether they will work in reality as pressures build from a more dangerous world and an older population. There are also fears that Reeves's announcement will pave the way for massive increases in council tax to keep Britain's streets safe. Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), says that while health and defence are big winners 'in pounds and pence, even here, one has to wonder whether this will be enough'. There are other pressures elsewhere. The Chancellor once vowed to never make an unfunded spending commitment but this week announced she will restore winter fuel payments to most pensioners with no clues as to how it will be paid for. She has also announced a Fair Pay Agreement for social care, which will set minimum terms across the sector without any clarity on how the proposals will be funded. Welfare spending, which sits outside Whitehall budgets, is poised to keep ballooning over the next five years as the Government prepares another about-turn to planned cuts to disability benefits. And unresolved questions over levies such as fuel duty will also pile more pressure on the Chancellor. While Reeves's statement is meant to set in stone government spending plans for at least the next three years, her £40bn tax raid last year may not be enough to foot the eventual bill. The tax burden is already on course to reach a peacetime high, but JP Morgan and Capital Economics both believe that Reeves will have to raise taxes by more than £20bn in the Budget this autumn to cover her increased spending plans and fend off increasing pressure from Reform. 'The spending review contains few surprises,' says Elliott Jordan-Doak, at Pantheon Macroeconomics. 'The question is only how big tax hikes will be in October.' The Government hinted on Wednesday that council tax would rise sharply to pay for policing after Reeves cut the Home Office budget by 2.2pc. Reeves claimed 'police spending power' would increase by 2.3pc in the coming years, which documents suggest could include more money from council tax. The Liberal Democrats said families in typical Band D households now faced a £395 increase in council tax by the next election. While the NHS is clearly a winner, there are already questions over whether the money will be enough to keep the health service running. Analysis by the IFS shows there have been just two occasions – in 1991 and 2004 – where health spending grew more slowly than envisaged in the spending review. More often, governments have been forced to top up health budgets to boost day-to-day health spending, which is on course to rise from a 26pc share of Whitehall budgets in 1999 to more than 40pc by the end of the decade. Reeves has set out plans to increase the NHS day-to-day budget more slowly than its historical average – by 3pc in real terms compared to 3.6pc – despite growing pressures on the health service. The plan set out by the previous Conservative government assumed real-terms funding increases of around 3.6pc per year. Johnson says: 'Aiming to get back to meeting the NHS 18 week target for hospital waiting times within this parliament is enormously ambitious – an NHS funding settlement below the long-run average might not measure up.' The plans also revealed the front-loaded nature of many of the settlements, with NHS capital spending set to remain flat in real terms for the rest of the decade after this year. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the Government's tax and spending watchdog, believes pressures from an older and sicker population will increase demand for NHS services by 1.1pc per year alone. 'The pressure to spend more on the NHS will still be great even after today's announcement,' says Jordan-Doak. Economists also questioned whether the health department's pledge to find £9bn in efficiency savings by the end of the decade was credible. Labour will unveil a refreshed NHS 10-year plan in the coming months, which is expected to demand more spending on staff and equipment to deal with Britain's demographic challenge. Another winner from Wednesday's spending review was defence, with spending in this area on track to rise to 2.6pc of GDP by 2027. But there was no mention of a 3pc target which Sir Keir Starmer has committed to, let alone the 3.5pc goal Nato is piling pressure on countries to reach. Increasing defence spending from 2.5pc of GDP to 3pc represents an increase of £17bn by the end of the decade. That's the equivalent of an extra 2p on income tax. Johnson says: 'On defence, it's entirely possible that an increase in the Nato spending target will mean that maintaining defence spending at 2.6pc of GDP no longer cuts the mustard.' There are also doubts about whether Reeves will be able to force through the cuts envisioned for the departments that lost out in Wednesday's announcement – including the Home Office, transport, Foreign Office and environment departments, which will suffer cuts in real terms. Even schools will get a real-terms freeze if you strip out the cost of expanding free school meals. In fact, departmental spending to 2028 will on average grow more slowly than under plans Rishi Sunak set out in the Conservatives' last spending review in 2021. 'We think that these real-terms spending cuts will be impossible to deliver given the pressure on public services and voters' demands for increased spending,' says Jordan-Doak. Then there are the Chancellor's investment plans. Capital spending is set to rise by £113bn over this parliament, with money going on everything from transport to green energy, new prisons and housing. Reeves is gambling that this investment blitz can kick-start growth. But as with any gamble, there is a risk it could go wrong. 'If the Government insists on accumulating the extra spending it's planning over the full parliament, it seems only fair to also draw attention to the £140bn of extra borrowing we're forecast to do over the same period,' says Johnson, at the IFS. Extra borrowing will keep Britain's debt pile rising every year until the end of the decade. 'That borrowing incurs a cost in the form of additional debt interest – and one that's bigger than it was a year ago,' says Johnson. The question was always whether the extra investment would bring sufficient benefits to make that worthwhile.' Government borrowing costs rose in the immediate aftermath of Reeves's announcement. Andrew Goodwin, at Oxford Economics, calculates that the Chancellor's already wafer-thin £9.9bn headroom to meet her borrowing rules has already been eroded by £2.5bn as a result of higher gilt yields. And while Reeves boasts about all the extra investment being pumped into the economy, another key question is: will she be able to get all of that money out the door? Previous analysis by the Resolution Foundation shows that successive governments of all stripes have struggled to spend all the money they wanted. Just £1 in every £6 in planned investment spending over the past seven spending reviews since 1998 actually went out the door. Why? Governments are often too optimistic about when projects become shovel-ready. There may be planning hold-ups, and the construction sector may not be able to cope with all that extra demand for engineers, project managers and construction workers to deliver these projects. 'We now know more about what sorts of projects the Government plans to invest in,' Johnson says. 'The focus must now shift to delivery and avoiding the all-too-common project over-runs.' Governments have in the past raided capital budgets in order to make their day-to-day spending budgets add up. New safeguards have been introduced to in theory prevent this from happening again. But this may simply make it harder for Labour to meet spending demands if plans go awry without putting up tax. Ben Ramanauskas, at Policy Exchange, casts doubt on Labour's ability to live within its means. He says: 'While the uplift to the defence and criminal justice budgets are welcome, this is unlikely to go far enough. Instead the Chancellor has chosen to prioritise the NHS by giving it even more money, without insisting on productivity improvements.' All this is expected to keep the size of the state permanently bigger than its pre-lockdown size. Ramanauskas says: 'The Government is yet to set out how it will fund its largesse to the public sector. However, it will almost certainly have to place even greater strain on the public finances by increasing borrowing or adding extra burdens to households and businesses by raising taxes.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Sign in to access your portfolio