One from Keir Starmer’s legion of allies who were vanquished from cabinet by Andy Burnham wasted barely more than 12 hours in hitting back at the new UK prime minister’s administration, in a row over its first big policy announcement.
Darren Jones, who was sacked as the head of the cabinet office by Burnham just before 7pm on Monday, took to the social media platform X just after 7.30am on Tuesday to contradict the new chancellor of the exchequer over funding.
John Healey, who was appointed chancellor by Burnham on Monday, had tweeted that the new UK government’s first big policy announcement – to axe the 5 per cent VAT on electricity bills – would be paid for by scrapping Starmer’s Digital ID project.
“But the Digital ID program was unfunded,” replied Jones, who previously worked as chief secretary to the UK treasury before moving to work in Downing Street and the cabinet office for Starmer.
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“The government will have to set out how it will pay for its policies at the budget,” said Jones, who was also the minister who unveiled the card prototype for the ID scheme.
The flinty observation overshadowed the launch of the VAT move, which Burnham has promised from October 1st as a measure to help families cope with the cost of living.
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The digital cards scheme had been slated to cost £1.8 billion, but the expenditure had been “scored” by the government system, meaning the cash had not yet been found from resources in other departments.
James Lyons, who quit last year after just six months as Starmer’s communications director, said he would be “incandescent” if the government he worked for had been contradicted in this way.
“They’d be peeling me off the ceiling,” he told Times Radio.
Later on Tuesday, Number 10 hit back by insisting that the VAT cut was “fully funded”. It said that government departments had already been ordered to find savings under their budget reprioritisations to pay the £1.8 billion to fund Digital ID, and these would be diverted to find the VAT cut instead.
The row came a day after Burnham purged most of Starmer’s allies from his new government. Eleven of the former prime minister’s loyalists were sacked on Monday, including Jones, housing secretary Steve Reed and deputy prime minister David Lammy.
Some Labour MPs argued on Tuesday that the clear out of Starmerites had undermined Burnham’s appeal to the party to set aside “factionalism” and unite in government.
Burnham’s new cabinet held its first meeting on Tuesday, during which the UK prime minister urged it to lead a “cost-of-living government” and to each find ways to “take some pressure off people’s shoulders”.
