Energy bills: Starmer slammed by pensioner for lack of 'reassurance'
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The Labour leader was slapped down during a phone-in on Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 show by a 68-year-old pensioner. Kathleen dialled in from the West Midlands to respond the Sir Keir Starmer’s policies to tackle the energy bills crisis but felt the Labour offer was lacking.
Kathleen told Mr Starmer on Jeremy Vine: “You haven’t really reassured me, Mr Starmer, I am sorry to say.”
She continued: “I’m a lady of 68. I’ve always been in full-time employment. I worked for councils for 39 years. I went through as a young mother, when we had the strikes and the power cuts in the early 70s. My son was two.
“I feel that instead of going forward, like we should be going forward. We haven’t we’ve really sort of gone a little bit backwards, and everybody deserves a good living, everybody, decent, but that’s not my point.
“The point is, was my energy crisis.”
Sir Keir said his party’s £29 billion plan to freeze energy bills would help all households because even people earning £50,000 “are going to be struggling”.
Defending the decision to offer universal help rather than support targeted only at the poorest households, he said: “If you apply it to everyone, it helps bring inflation down by 4% because energy prices push up inflation.”
He told Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine: “I think if you’re on £50 grand you’re going to really struggle with £4,000 on your energy bills.
“I think there will be many people watching who accept ‘I’m not the hardest-up, I’ve got a decent wage, but £4,000 on my energy bills is more than I can afford.”
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Sir Keir told the programme people are “worried sick” about their bills but “at the same time you’ve got oil and gas companies making huge profits”.
“The Labour Party under my leadership is not going to walk past this and leave people struggling this winter.
The Labour leader said he would not be joining striking workers on picket lines but insisted he supported unions.
Members of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) at nine train operating companies as well as Network Rail will walk out from midday on September 26, during Labour’s autumn conference.
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Sir Keir told Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine: “When it comes to industrial action, I completely understand why people are voting to go on strike, I understand how much they’re struggling – wages have been stagnant for the best part of 10 years, we’ve now got a cost-of-living crisis, so prices are going up.”
People are “really struggling”, he said, adding: “I support the right to strike, the trade unions are representing their members, but my job is different, my job is to get a Labour government elected.
“My job, if there’s a Labour government, is to make sure that we can resolve the issues because nobody really wants strikes to go ahead, they’re hugely disruptive, they’re pretty awful for those on strike.”
Asked if he would join TSSA workers on the picket line he said: “No. I want a Labour government, I want to be a Labour prime minister. You can’t sit around the Cabinet table resolving issues and then walk onto a picket line, they are different jobs.”
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