‘Show the difference Labour can make,’ Starmer to tell local elections launch

Keir Starmer will launch Labour’s local elections campaign by urging party activists to “show people the difference Labour can make” and pledging that, if the party was in government, it would freeze council tax for the coming year.

Launching the party’s campaign in a speech in Swindon on Thursday, the Labour leader will announce that the party would freeze council tax through an expansion of the windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies, declaring that Labour is the “party of lower taxes for working people”.

The majority of councils in England have chosen to increase council tax by 4.99%, the maximum amount permitted this year. Three councils in financial difficulty were given special permission to raise taxes above the limit – Croydon, where there will be a 15% increase, and Thurrock and Slough, both of which will see a 10% rise.

The opposition accused the the government of “once again effectively forcing councils to put up council tax” by reducing funding to councils and then permitting them to raise council tax.

Starmer is expected to say: “There is a choice on tax. A Tory choice – taxes up for working people, tax cuts for the 1%. Or a Labour choice. Where we cut business rates to save our high streets and where, if there was a Labour government, you could take that council tax rise you just got and rip it up.

“A Labour government would freeze your council tax this year – that’s our choice. A tax cut for the many, not just for the top 1%. So take this message to every doorstep in your community: Labour is the party of lower taxes for working people. That’s the difference we can make. That’s the choice in May. A better Britain.”

Labour has previously set out plans to increase the revenue raised by the government’s windfall tax by raising the rate of the tax to 38%, scrapping the investment allowances included in the levy and backdating the start of the tax to January 2022, when the opposition first proposed that a levy be introduced.

According to Labour analysis of recent Office for Budget Responsibility figures, the party’s proposed changes to the design of the levy would raise £10.4bn over 2022/23 and 2023/24, enough to fund the freeze in council tax, which Labour calculated would cost £2.7bn.

Starmer will tell attendees at the launch event: “We’ve got to send a message to this government: what they’ve delivered to our country after 13 years in power is nowhere near good enough.

“Just look around Britain. Seven million on NHS waiting lists. Crime – totally unpunished. The biggest hit to living standards, the cash in your pocket, on record. Does anyone honestly think that Britain can’t do better than this?”

He will say Labour is on the side of families during the cost-of-living crisis, reiterating its plans to reduce energy bills by insulating millions homes, abolish the non-dom tax status and reverse the Tories’ decision to axe the lifetime allowance – the cap on the amount workers can accumulate in their pension before paying extra tax.

Addressing party activists ahead of the May elections, Starmer is expected say: “We’ve got to get out there and show people the difference Labour can make. Let them see our hunger for change.

“We have to prove that this suffocating cost-of-living crisis, the path of decline the Tories have set Britain on, the endless ‘sticking-plaster politics’, is not inevitable. There is a choice.”

Jeremy Hunt announced in the Budget earlier this month that the lifetime allowance – previously set at £1.07m – would be scrapped and that the tax-free yearly allowance for pensions would rise from £40,000 to £60,000.

Responding to the Chancellor’s statement, Starmer condemned the plan for pensions as a “huge giveaway to some of the very wealthiest”, declaring: “The only permanent tax cut in the Budget is for the richest 1%. How can that possibly be a priority for this government?”