Kelvin Mackenzie
Guest Reporter
Since Liz Kendall, the Works and Pensions Cabinet minister, has been in Labour politics for thirty years you would have thought she would have seen this coming.
Perhaps, like Starmer, now she’s in power with an enormous majority, she no longer cares. One minute she is stopping pensioners from receiving their £300 winter fuel payment and the next it’s claimed on the front page she is having her own £350-a-month energy bill picked up by the taxpayer for her constituency home while she lives in a £4million home in Notting Hill with her partner.
The grim tale, if you’re a socialist, was revealed in the Mail on Sunday. It starts happily enough with the fact that she bought in 2021 with her Old Etonian banker partner (a chap called James Ind) a nice pile made up of four bedrooms, four reception rooms and three bathrooms.
Not made clear how much of the £3.9million she put up as she had been in the political world since leaving Cambridge University in her early twenties.
However, she’s not as skint as her voters making £150,000 plus a year in the Cabinet.
When Starmer came to power he decreed that the nation was so short of money that he was going to withdraw the £300 winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners. At the same time, he sanctioned an increase in pay for state workers.
While the old suffered financial pain the train drivers moved smartly up to £93,000-a-year. This is when the focus fell on Kendall. She has a rented home in her constituency in Leicester West on which she is allowed to claim costs. And in the period between April 2023 and this July she reportedly claimed £3,810 in energy costs.
A source close to Ms Kendall has defended her, saying: “The accommodation costs budget is designed to meet costs incurred by MPs as a result of working from two permanent locations. MPs of all parties are entitled to this, and they continue paying their utility bills for their own homes like everyone else.”
But it may be now that these payments have become publicised, she would do the wise thing and not make any further claims. I wouldn’t bet on it.
After all, Labour has a leader who saw nothing wrong in somebody paying for his suits and a Chancellor who saw nothing wrong in somebody paying for her frocks. This is just another example of the system being exploited.
After five disastrous months, Labour is clearly in trouble. So much trouble that on Thursday, Starmer is having to relaunch the project, calling it Plan for Change. On Twitter, I have called it Plan for a Change of Underpants.
It’s now being suggested that Starmer isn’t interested enough in politics to stay the course. I look at it from another direction: I don’t think he’s good enough to stay the course.
He would see nothing wrong in Kendall claiming £350-a-month from the taxpayer while denying the £300 to elderly voters.
He would say, as a lawyer, I can’t see any possible link between the two decisions. And that’s what makes him unsuitable as Prime Minister.
Both he and Rachel from Accounts made growth their big shout. I have just seen retail sales (both online and shops) are down 5.8 per cent, the worst since the pandemic when we couldn’t actually get to the shops. How awful is that? Either voters haven’t got the money or they don’t want to spend it for fear of what may be coming down the road under Labour. Whichever way you look at it, this Government is not capable of making us richer.
In fact, it may be flat-out trying to make us poorer. It may be okay for Kendall but a nightmare looms for the rest of us.
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Perhaps, like Starmer, now she’s in power with an enormous majority, she no longer cares. One minute she is stopping pensioners from receiving their £300 winter fuel payment and the next it’s claimed on the front page she is having her own £350-a-month energy bill picked up by the taxpayer for her constituency home while she lives in a £4million home in Notting Hill with her partner.
The grim tale, if you’re a socialist, was revealed in the Mail on Sunday. It starts happily enough with the fact that she bought in 2021 with her Old Etonian banker partner (a chap called James Ind) a nice pile made up of four bedrooms, four reception rooms and three bathrooms.
Not made clear how much of the £3.9million she put up as she had been in the political world since leaving Cambridge University in her early twenties.
However, she’s not as skint as her voters making £150,000 plus a year in the Cabinet.
When Starmer came to power he decreed that the nation was so short of money that he was going to withdraw the £300 winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners. At the same time, he sanctioned an increase in pay for state workers.
While the old suffered financial pain the train drivers moved smartly up to £93,000-a-year. This is when the focus fell on Kendall. She has a rented home in her constituency in Leicester West on which she is allowed to claim costs. And in the period between April 2023 and this July she reportedly claimed £3,810 in energy costs.
A source close to Ms Kendall has defended her, saying: “The accommodation costs budget is designed to meet costs incurred by MPs as a result of working from two permanent locations. MPs of all parties are entitled to this, and they continue paying their utility bills for their own homes like everyone else.”
But it may be now that these payments have become publicised, she would do the wise thing and not make any further claims. I wouldn’t bet on it.
After all, Labour has a leader who saw nothing wrong in somebody paying for his suits and a Chancellor who saw nothing wrong in somebody paying for her frocks. This is just another example of the system being exploited.
After five disastrous months, Labour is clearly in trouble. So much trouble that on Thursday, Starmer is having to relaunch the project, calling it Plan for Change. On Twitter, I have called it Plan for a Change of Underpants.
It’s now being suggested that Starmer isn’t interested enough in politics to stay the course. I look at it from another direction: I don’t think he’s good enough to stay the course.
He would see nothing wrong in Kendall claiming £350-a-month from the taxpayer while denying the £300 to elderly voters.
He would say, as a lawyer, I can’t see any possible link between the two decisions. And that’s what makes him unsuitable as Prime Minister.
Both he and Rachel from Accounts made growth their big shout. I have just seen retail sales (both online and shops) are down 5.8 per cent, the worst since the pandemic when we couldn’t actually get to the shops. How awful is that? Either voters haven’t got the money or they don’t want to spend it for fear of what may be coming down the road under Labour. Whichever way you look at it, this Government is not capable of making us richer.
In fact, it may be flat-out trying to make us poorer. It may be okay for Kendall but a nightmare looms for the rest of us.
Find Out More...