Labour warns Rishi Sunak 'can't stop telling porkies' in savage advert

06 June 2024 , 07:41

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Labour has given a Tory poster making the bogus tax claim a makeover

Labour has warned that Rishi Sunak “can’t stop telling porkies” in a new attack advert.

The party is taking aim at the Prime Minister after he was accused of repeatedly lying in the ITV election debate. The Conservative Party has produced an advert repeating his bogus claim that Keir Starmer’s promises would cost working families £2,094.

Labour has given the poster, which includes a picture of a piggy bank, a makeover. “Rishi Sunak just can’t stop telling porkies,” it says. “Lied about NHS waiting lists. Lied about the cost of living. Lied about small boats. What else is he lying about?”

Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones has demanded the PM apologise to the British public and scrap Tory attack adverts using the debunked £2,000 figure. He told the Mirror: “Rishi Sunak seems to have resorted to desperate lying as a strategy for trying to win the election. He lied on NHS waiting lists, he’s lied on small boats and he lied when he used these discredited numbers on tax. Members of the public cannot believe what Conservative politicians are saying. It discredits the office of Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak should apologise to the British people.”

Rishi Sunak repeatedly claimed Labour was plotting tax rises during the ITV debate (PA Media)

Mr Sunak’s campaign tactics appear to have spectacularly backfired as even Tory bible The Spectator criticised them. The magazine’s editor Fraser Nelson wrote: “There are serious issues at stake in this General Election and the Tories have just released nonsense figures with fake attribution… I’m really not sure that this will help their chances very much.” He suggested that if the same dodgy maths was used to calculate Conservative election plans, they would work out at a £3,000 tax rise.

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The Tories have produced a “dodgy dossier” claiming there is a £38billion black hole in Labour plans. Ministers asked officials to estimate the costs of some of the policies, but are accused of giving them false assumptions to bump up the figures. Parts of the dossier also were not based on numbers from officials. In a letter on Monday, Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler said ministers should not say they came up with the £38billion figure when it "includes costs beyond those provided by the Civil Service".

At the debate, Mr Sunak also claimed in the debate that NHS waiting lists were falling, even though they are higher than when he made a promise to bring them down. He also argued that he’d cut small boat crossings, even though they are actually up so far this year. Labour said it showed Mr Sunak was “not just hopeless at his job, but a desperate liar”.

John Stevens