GB News sparked uproar as hosts discussed Andy Burnham's possible tax hike this autumn, with a warning that Brits face "a lot of pain to come."
Prime Minister refuses to rule out tax rises
On Tuesday (August 25), the Prime Minister refused to rule out tax hikes because he "won't be unrealistic" about the "challenging" state of public finances. The Labour leader added that he would take a "careful approach" to the economy, and defended his previously announced cost-of-living pledges as funded spending commitments.
Broadcaster warns of dire economic state
On the breakfast show, hosts Ellie Costello and Alexander Armstrong welcomed Fraser Myers of Spiked Online onto the programme to react to the latest development. The broadcaster certainly didn't mince his words, as he warned: "He says he doesn't want to be unrealistic with the economy, which is a new spin we haven't heard before.
"The economy is in a really dire state, growth has slowed, borrowing has gone up, it's jumped up by £700million in the last month or so, which is a much higher jump than expected. We have the Iran war, we have increasing borrowing, all of these things eating away at the Chancellor's fiscal headroom, and it's gone down by."
Dwindling funds for Labour Government
He went on to point out the dwindling funds for the new Labour Government, which will inevitably play a big part in the possible tax rises. The journalist continued: "Rachel Reeves had a fiscal headroom of £22billion, John Healey in this budget looks like he's only going to have £15billion to play with, and that means it's going to be harder and harder to make the nonsensical fiscal target, which is never going to be met, of not paying for day-to-day borrowing by the end of the day."
The Government has three options: it can cut spending, it can raise taxes, or it can boost growth, and I think we know that it's going to fall on the taxes because I don't think we've heard anything from Andy Burnham about boosting growth; he's more interested in spending money."
