October budget will be 'painful,' says UK premier

By Burak Bir

LONDON (AA) - The British prime minister on Tuesday paved the way for a tax rise as he warned that the budget coming in October will be "painful."

In his first major speech as prime minister, Keir Starmer talked about his government's plan ahead of parliament's return from recess next week, warning of a "painful" budget and "unpopular decisions" to come.

"I will be honest with you, there is a budget coming in October, and it's going to be painful. We have no other choice, given the situation that we're in," he told a news conference from the Downing Street Rose Garden in London.

Starmer became prime minister last month after his Labour Party won the House of Commons by a landslide, capturing 412 of the chamber's 650 seats.

The prime minister added: "Those with the broader shoulders should bear the heavier burden."

In an address to the nation on his first full day as prime minister in July, Starmer pledged not to increase taxes that were not included in the Labour manifesto.

However, in Tuesday's address, he said that he would make "big asks" of the public to accept "short-term pain for long-term good."

Reminding that parliament will return from recess next week, he stressed that it will not be "business as usual, because we cannot go on like this anymore."

"I know that after all that you have been through, that is a really big ask and really difficult to hear. That is not the position we should be in ... but we have to end the politics of the easy answer that solves nothing," he said.

"Even last Wednesday ... we found out that, thanks to the last government's recklessness, we borrowed almost 5 billion pounds more than the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) expected in the last three months alone. That's not performative, that's a fact," he added.

- 'We've done more in seven weeks'

Starmer said wealth creation is the "number one priority" of his Labor government, expressing that that is why in first few weeks of his government they have set up the National Wealth Fund. "We want every person and every community to benefit."

"We have done more in seven weeks than the last government did in seven years, and these are just the first steps towards the change that people voted for the change that I'm determined to deliver," Starmer said.

Also touching on the state of prisons, the prime minister said: "I can't build a prison by Saturday, we will fix it. We've already taken the measures that as I make sure we can get through the disorder."

On Aug. 19, the British government activated emergency measures to ease prison overcrowding in England, as more far-right rioters are set to be jailed for their role in the recent violent disorder.

The system, known as Operation Early Dawn, has been activated to allow the government to keep defendants waiting for court appearances in police cells across northern England until prison space becomes available.

"Every day of that disorder, literally every day, we had to check the precise number of prison places and where those places were to make sure that we could arrest, charge, and prosecute people quickly," Starmer said.

He said rioters throwing rocks, torching cars and making threats knew the system was broken.

"They (rioters) saw the cracks in our society after 14 years of failure, and they exploited them," the prime minister added.

"I didn't want to release prisoners early. I was chief prosecutor for five years. It goes against the grain of everything I've ever done. But to be blunt, if we hadn't taken that difficult decision immediately, we wouldn't have been able to respond to the riots, as we did," he said.

The UK has seen a surge in charges as authorities respond to the violent riots, which were fueled by false online claims that the suspect in the fatal stabbing of three children in Southport was a Muslim asylum seeker. The attacker, identified as Axel Rudakubana, a 17-year-old from Cardiff with Rwandan parents, has done little to deter the far-right mobs.

On Aug. 4, Starmer condemned the riots as "far-right thuggery" and warned that those involved in the violence would "regret" their actions.