A politician slamming millions of working people with a manifesto-breaking tax hike to pour £36bn into the NHS and social care. It is exactly the sort of policy you’d associate with a Labour leader, but instead it has come from a Conservative PM. 

Boris Johnson is already ahead in the polls and in (relative) popularity ratings during a pandemic that has seen 150,000 people die and a string of broken promises to the British people. And now, he appears to have snookered Sir Keir Starmer on the NHS too.

But when I put that to the Labour leader on the visit to a sixth form college in Stoke-on-Trent, a place where Labour lost two seats in 2019 that they had held since 1950, he was uncharacteristically spiky.

“The idea that anybody working in the NHS thinks the Tory party is the party of the NHS is ridiculous,” Sir Keir told me in an exclusive interview with Sky News.

“If the prime minister brought forward a plan to genuinely fix social care and bring down waiting lists underpinned by fair funding, I would support it. What I won’t support is a plan that doesn’t fix social care, and won’t bring down waiting lists. He’s not the party of the NHS. For ten years they have starved the NHS.”

Not any more: the Conservatives are now signalling to voters that they are prepared to raise taxes to fund the NHS, and Labour has found itself in the awkward position of voting against a £36bn deal for the health and social care funding.

Sir Keir is adamant he won’t back “an unfair tax hike for working people”, but regardless of the pros and cons of the policy the naked politics of blocking a big funding deal for the NHS are hard.

Keir Starmer needs to present a ‘much better alternative’ plan for social care, according to Andy Burnham

Man found guilty of sending hundreds of abusive emails to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry

Labour Party staff vote in favour of strike action over threat of compulsory redundancies

The forensic lawyer is quick to run through what he considers holes in the PM’s plan, arguing that the policy fails three key tests: people will still need to sell their homes to pay for care; there isn’t a plan to bring down waiting lists in the three years; and the tax rise is unfair, putting “all the heavy lifting on working people”.

But when it comes to what Sir Keir Starmer wants, there is still a lack of answers – to the frustration of some of his colleagues and the public too.

During our interview in the sixth form college, Sir Keir did offer up some policy principles: an “at home approach” to allow people to stay at home rather than going into care, and a new package of better pay and conditions for care workers. He also, after being asked six times, finally said he backed paying for social care through a wealth tax.

Inching closer to an alternative plan. But even those MPs and party members who have backed him are getting weary of his reticence to make bold policy commitments or offer up a vision of how he wants to lead the Labour party and the country beyond saying he’s not Jeremy Corbyn and the party is under new management. It’s growing old 18 months in.

On the train up to Stoke, he told me that he likes escaping the Westminster bubble and has enjoyed his summer tour of Great Britain, going to seats Labour lost to try to better understand how it might when them back. It has not been a warm bath, he says, but it has energised him.

And even out of the bubble, Sir Keir is beset by some of the problems that face him down there. As some of the students he spoke to at the college put it to me, once the Labour leader had left the room, he’s a really nice guy but he’s not a leader – we know what he’s against, but not what’s he for.

And that is Sir Keir’s challenge for the autumn – to give people a reason to vote for his Labour party.

His conference speech will be the moment where he sets out what the future looks like under Labour. He disagrees that the speech will be a re-launch or his leadership or a make of break more. But after a difficult six months, a lot is riding on a good performance at the end of this month.

Related posts:

Tory Brexiteers call on PM to scrap Northern Ireland Protocol – a year after they voted for it Sturgeon should quit if she broke ministerial code, says Scots Labour leader PM accused of border ‘incompetence’ amid hunt for Brazil variant case Sturgeon in thinly-veiled attack on Salmond as she launches SNP campaign Sturgeon’s future depends on both the ‘when’ and the ‘if’ of indyref2 PM under investigation over £15,000 Mustique holiday From house building to voter ID – what’s in the Queen’s Speech UK government shown ‘very challenging new information’ on Omicron and will keep restrictions ‘under review’, says Gove Britain and Jersey grant extra licences for French boats to fish in UK waters ‘Gary Neville is a red, is a red, is a red….’: Ex-Man United captain joins Labour Party PM thought lockdown party ‘was a work event’ – education secretary defends under-fire Johnson Government wins appeal over ‘unlawful’ COVID contract given to Cummings’s friends