Gordon Brown: ‘Set emergency budget or risk a winter of dire poverty’
Boris Johnson and the Tory leadership candidates should agree an immediate emergency budget tackling the spiralling cost of living, Gordon Brown has said, or risk “condemning millions of vulnerable and blameless children and pensioners to a winter of dire poverty”.
The intervention by the former prime minister comes as new figures seen by the Observer show that more than 4 million households are on course to spend a quarter of their net income on energy.
“The reality is grim and undeniable: a financial timebomb will explode for families in October as a second round of fuel price rises in six months sends shock waves through every household and pushes millions over the edge,” Brown writes in Sunday’s Observer.
“The more the Conservative leadership election heats up, the more the remaining candidates have resorted to claiming the moral high ground. Raising debt is ‘immoral’, Rishi Sunak is saying. ‘High taxes are immoral,’ retorts Liz Truss. But there is nothing moral about indifferent leaders condemning millions of vulnerable and blameless children and pensioners to a winter of dire poverty.”
He adds: “Boris Johnson, Sunak and Truss must this week agree an emergency budget. If they do not, parliament should be recalled to force them to do so.”
It follows the Bank of England’s grim forecast last week that inflation will soar to 13% in October. There have also been predictions that UK energy bills could reach more than £3,600 a year this winter.
With pressure growing for action, senior Labour sources have confirmed to the Observer that the party is preparing to back a key intervention designed to curb the winter crisis, in addition to the removal of VAT on energy bills that it has already supported.
Labour leader Keir Starmer and
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