LIVERPOOL, England (Reuters) – Britain’s opposition party leader Keir Starmer said on Sunday he would reintroduce the top income tax rate to 45 percent after the government scrapped the rate in a mini-budget.
Starmer is under pressure to assert himself as the prime minister-in-waiting as he begins his campaign for power at this week’s annual Labor Party conference in Liverpool in northwest England.
The Labor leader said the move to lower the highest tax rate was unfair because it gave someone who earns 1 million pounds ($1.09 million) a 55,000-pound tax cut.
“I’m going to reverse the decision they made,” Labor leader Starmer told the BBC. “It’s so risky, it’s so divisive, and I’d like to reverse it.”
Labor will use this week’s conference to draw lines on key policy issues after the government announced deep tax cuts, massive increases in borrowing and abolition of banker bonus caps.
However, Starmer said the Labor government would not reverse the government’s decision to lower the basic income tax rate to 19% from 20%.
“I’ve always made the argument that we should reduce the tax burden on workers so that we don’t reverse it,” he said.
(dollar = 0.9211 pounds)
