The Labour Party has a chance, finally, to speak for the nation

Editorial: Sir Keir Starmer must find his voice at the opposition party’s annual conference in Liverpool

This government has chosen the wrong path and Sir Keir must find his voice to oppose it (Getty)

Liz Truss said she was going to do things differently and she has been true to her word. Her government has departed from two principles that have been supported by all the main parties for most of this country’s democratic history.

One is that public borrowing should be sustainable, constrained by rules that require debt to fall as a share of national income in normal times. The other is that, in times of national financial stringency, the burden of sacrifice should be borne by those with the broadest shoulders.

The new government’s emergency mini-Budget on Friday treated each of those principles with contempt. Most of the increase in borrowing announced by the chancellor was justified, needed to pay for the urgent, temporary and substantial subsidies required to keep energy bills at current levels. This will limit hardship, protect jobs, and prevent inflation from rising even higher.

But Kwasi Kwarteng should have had the confidence to submit his plans to independent scrutiny by the Office for Budget Responsibility. He should have set out a credible course for restoring the public finances to sustainability. And he should have sought to fund more of the subsidies through a higher windfall tax on oil and gas companies, and by maintaining taxes on those with higher incomes.

Admittedly, these measures would not produce vast additional sums; but a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money, as a US senator never quite said. And the two messages that this would send are important. One, that the government takes minimising the debt seriously. Two, that a time of common sacrifice requires those who are able to contribute more to do so.

Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, his shadow chancellor, have done a reasonable job of making these arguments. The Labour leader pointed out, when he and Ms Truss first faced each other in the Commons, that every pound not taken in an additional windfall tax is a pound added to government borrowing. Ms Reeves claimed on Friday that the personal tax cuts announced by Mr Kwarteng are “a plan to reward the already wealthy”.

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And Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, writing for The Independent, accuses the prime minister of having “chosen to line the pockets of energy executives and big bankers” rather than “bringing people together”.

At Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool over the next few days, Sir Keir, Ms Reeves and Ms Rayner need to raise their sights from the irrelevant distractions of singing the national anthem and the wilder class-war rhetoric of some of the more enthusiastic delegates.

They need to speak for a nation that recognises the seriousness of the energy crisis, respects responsibility in managing public finances, and demands shared sacrifice according to people’s means in a time of hardship. This government has chosen the wrong path and Sir Keir must find his voice to oppose it.