Labour liked to accuse Boris Johnson of lying. Compared to Keir Starmer, BoJo was a clown.
Keir Starmer is repeatedly economical with the truth. That won’t change (Image: Getty)
Last December, I warned Starmer had lifted lying to a new level, and he wasn’t going to stop. Well, he hasn’t. This week, the truth emerged about the shabby Chagos Islands handover.
Starmer said it would cost £3.4billion. The real figure? £35billion. That’s 10 times more than he claimed and he tried to hide the truth from us. If that doesn’t make your blood boil, here’s another 24 times Starmer was economical with the truth.
1. The 10 pledges con. Starmer won the Labour leadership by promising 10 hard-left policies, from scrapping tuition fees to ending the two-child benefit cap. Once in charge, he dumped the lot (to be fair, that was a good thing).
2. The Winter Fuel betrayal. Before the election, he led pensioners to believe the Winter Fuel Payment was safe. It wasn’t.
3. The social care stitch-up. He also stayed silent on scrapping the £86,000 social care cap, then binned it without warning in a huge blow to the elderly.
4. Waspi women abandoned. Starmer publicly demanded pledged “fair and fast” compensation for millions 1950s women hits by the rising state pension age. He took their votes and dumped them after taking office.
5. Breaking his ‘no tax rises’ vow. During the campaign, he repeatedly swore not to hike taxes on “working people”. Chancellor Rachel Reeves then hiked employer’s National Insurance (NI) by £25billion. The Office for Budget Responsibility calculates that 75% of the cost will be passed onto working people in lower wages and higher prices.
6. Then lying about what he’d said. As I exposed yesterday, the Labour manifesto pledged not to increase NI. Yesterday, the Treasury fiddled that, lyingly claiming Labour had stuck to its promise not to increase employee NI. That after-the-fact lie is so blatant even my blood is boiling now.
7. Betrayed farmers. Starmer promised “certainty” to farmers, then hit them with inheritance tax on agricultural land. Hard-working farming families now face a lifetime of uncertainty.
8. Family firms misled. He vowed to work with business, then slapped NI and IHT on family-owned companies. Many firms will have to sell up when the founder dies, simply to cover the bill.
9. The ‘black hole’ lie. Starmer and Reeves dishonestly claimed to have discovered a £22billion black hole in the public finances to justify tax hikes they hadn’t mentioned in the election. Outraged, the normally measured Institute for Fiscal Studies said the hole had been “obvious to anyone who dared to look”.
10. Interest rate fiction. Never trust Starmer around a number. He casually told Parliament Labour inherited interest rates of 11%, more than double the true figure of 5.25%. Didn’t he think someone would check?
11. Brexit double-deal. His EU deal was a backdoor return to freedom of movement, betraying British workers despite election claims. He also sold out UK workers in his India trade deal.
12. NHS outsourcing U-turn. In a bid to woo the Labour left, Starmer vowed to end private NHS contracts. Now he’s used them to treat 500,000 patients.
13. The gender truth dodge. The PM can’t even give a straight answer on what a woman is. Do they have penises? Don’t expect a straight answer.
14. Cosying up to Beijing. Our lawyer PM talked tough on human rights, then embraced closer ties with Xi Jinping’s China while clamping down on civil liberties at home. Labour was also buying green tech built by Chinese slavery, until backbench MPs forced a climbdown.
16. The social care numbers trick. Boasted of an £880million funding boost but hid that Labour’s NI hikes will cost children’s hospices and care homes £900million.
16. Border control collapse. The PM’s promises to “smash the gangs” behind Channel crossings are meaningless. Nearly 50,000 illegal migrants have arrived since he took office.
17. Paying France to fail. Taxpayers send millions to France to “stop the boats”, and the French just watch them leave.
18. Freebie mania. Starmer’s off-the-chart hypocrisy is shown by the way he’s accepted more than £100,000 in gifts, including football and concert tickets, more than any other political leader in recent times.
19. Clothing cover-up. He also failed to declare £5,000 worth of clothes for his wife from donor Lord Alli. It was later repaid, but only AFTER being exposed.
20. Accommodation perks. Oh yes, and Starmer also took free stays and other benefits from donors, fuelling “Freebiegate” claims.
21. Beergate unanswered. Boris was forced out by Partygate transgressions, among other things. Starmer somehow wriggled out of any charges, despite knocking down beer and curry with 17 people at the height of the pandemic. Apparently, it was “necessary work”.
22. Infecting others with his lies. Dishonesty spreads: I caught out Reeves on 12 rotten lies within months of taking office.
23. Rushanara Ali hypocrisy. His housing minister backed reforms to stop landlords evicting tenants then hiking rents. Turns out she’d done it herself. In contrast to Starmer, she quit when found out.
24. Dishonesty culture. Labour’s culture of double-dealing rolls on, with Starmer setting the tone from day one.
Our PM says one thing, does another, and thinks we won’t notice. Boris was forced out of Number 10. How is Starmer still there?
