It’s predicted that chancellor Rachel Reeves will raise taxes in the upcoming budget, even though Labour explicitly promised not to raise taxes in their 2024 manifesto. In an obvious attempt to distance herself from this betrayal, the new deputy leader Lucy Powell has come out to say the following:

NEW: Labour deputy leader Lucy Powell MP tells me @bbc5live the party should stand by it’s promises not to raise income tax, national insurance and VAT in the Budget.

She said “We should be following through on our manifesto, of course. There’s no question about that.”

She went…

— Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) November 6, 2025

A political party sticking to their manifesto promises?

Is that allowed?

Promises, promises

In a BBC Radio 5 Live interview, Powell said:

It’s really important we stand by the promises we were elected on and do what we said we would do.

Additionally, Powell thinks:

We should be following through on our manifesto, of course. There’s no question about that.

There actually is a question on that, because Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ plan to grow the economy by repeating the word ‘growth’ hasn’t got them anywhere.

In the Labour deputy leadership election, we noted that Powell’s voting record was almost identical to that of her opponent Bridget Phillipson (and by that, we mean ‘identically terrible’). Specifically we covered her record on Israel’s genocide:

In addition to her comments above, Powell also said Labour needs to ‘lift the two-child benefit cap in full’:

Every year that passes with this policy in place, another 40,000 minimum, 40,000 children, are pushed into deep levels of poverty as a result of it and that’s why it is urgent that we do lift it and we lift it in full.

While we don’t think Powell is a good politician, it is preferable to have someone in Labour challenging this stuff. The alternative would be some dead-eyed Starmer drone repeating indecipherable drivel like this:

We’re choosing renewal over decline.

Unity over division.

Unlocking the potential of everyone in every part of the UK.

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) November 1, 2025

Set in stone

To be fair to Powell, she isn’t all bad; just look at this banger:

Here’s my favourite Lucy Powell moment again:

In 2015 as Ed Miliband’s election manager when they had that ‘Ed Stone,’ she was being interrogated about policy on R4 & got irate & barked “Look just because we wrote it on a big concrete slab, that doesn’t mean it’s set in stone.”

— Ally Fogg (@AllyFogg) October 26, 2025

When it comes to Labour, nothing is set in stone – least of all their manifesto promises.

Featured image via Number 10 (Flickr) / Reel News (Wikimedia)

By Willem Moore

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