I'll fix Britain, vows Starmer, amid doubts over how he will pay for it

Labour leader places wealth creation at heart of plans in manifesto

- Pippa Crerar

Keir Starmer faced new questions over how Labour would pay to fix Britain's broken public services as he vowed to "turn the page for ever" on potential being held back and end political "pantomime" during the party's manifesto launch.

The Labour leader said he saw "potential held back" everywhere he went owing to lack of housing, the cost of living crisis, low wages and inadequate healthcare for children.

Putting wealth creation at the heart of the party's plan for government, he said the manifesto was a rejection of a "defeatist" approach to the economy that suggested the "only levers" were tax and spend, rather than growth.

"The way we create wealth is broken," he told an event in Manchester. "It leaves far too many people feeling insecure. Wealth creation is our number one priority. Growth is our core business. If you take nothing else away from this today, let it be this."

But he faced scepticism over how he could avoid deep spending cuts to public services such as transport, justice and local councils, without fudging his fiscal targets or putting up taxes.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, said Labour was part of a "conspiracy of silence" with the other main parties on the scale of the fiscal challenge and spending cuts to come. "Delivering genuine change will almost certainly also require putting actual resources on the table," he said. "Labour's manifesto offers no indication that there is a plan for where the money would come from to finance this."