I was right about Truss so trust me on Starmer, says Sunak

Rishi Sunak has said voters can trust what he says about Sir Keir Starmer because he was right to warn about Liz Truss’s plans for the economy.

In a televised interview with The Sun, the Prime Minister said he had been vindicated when he warned in 2022 that his predecessor’s economic policies would fuel interest rates.

He said: “I spent a summer a couple of summers ago saying that what Liz Truss was proposing was wrong, and I was behind [in the Tory leadership race].

“And everyone said to me, ‘Why are you bothering? Why are you still talking about this? No one wants to hear what you have to say’. I kept talking about it every day because I believed in what I was saying.

“I was right then when I warned about Liz Truss, and that’s why all of you can trust me now when I also warn about the damage that Keir Starmer would do to our economy.

“And I’m telling you again now, it all seems a bit familiar. If Keir Starmer is your prime minister, the economy is going to suffer, and all of you are going to suffer. I don’t want to see that happen. That’s why I’m carrying on every day in this election. I believe in what I’m saying, and I want to stop those tax rises.”

The Prime Minister repeated his claim from earlier in the campaign that Labour would put up taxes by £2,000 over the next parliament.

Sir Keir was questioned again about his decision to praise Jeremy Corbyn when he served in his shadow cabinet.

He told The Sun that he had done so because he knew he could get a chance to be leader after the inevitable end of Mr Corbyn’s time in office, and said he was right to stay to fight from within, for example to keep the party’s commitment to Nato.

“I felt that on issues such as Brexit, which I thought were going to define us for decades to come, leaders are temporary but political parties are permanent,” he said.

“But it was important to have a voice in the shadow cabinet, and it meant that I could challenge on anti-Semitism, and it meant that the Labour Party never veered from its position on things that were fundamentally important, like Nato.”

He said that he had “reflected” on his time serving in Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, adding: “I think it was right to fight. I think, in my case it was right to fight from within the shadow cabinet. I knew, everybody knew, there was always going to be a day after, when we would have the opportunity for a new leader of our party.”

Sir Keir said “no Labour leader has ever done anything as serious” as expelling Mr Corbyn from the party.

“Look at my leadership on this. I picked up the Labour Party, I recognised many people had not voted for us last time, possibly people in this room and I said, ‘We’re never going to put that proposition in front of the electorate again. I’m not going to tell the electorate, what do you think you’re doing?’ I’m going to say to my party, we need to shake this up and change it.

“So I’ve changed the Labour Party, so there’s a fundamentally different choice at this election. And Jeremy Corbyn not only lost the whip as a Labour MP, he’s now been expelled from the Labour Party. No Labour leader has ever done anything as serious as that about changing his or her party before.

“I’ve changed it, and now I hope that there is a Labour Party which people feel they can vote for this time, in a way which I accept wasn’t the case last time around.”