LEFT MPs warned today that pain and poverty are on the way after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told the country that “things will get worse.”

Responding to a keynote speech by the PM warning of a “tough” Budget coming in October, the group of five independent left MPs warned that “politics is about choices — and the government is choosing to inflict pain and poverty across the country.”

And Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said “a bleak vision of Britain is not what we need now. It is time to see the change that Labour promised.”

But Sir Keir, speaking from the garden of Downing Street, showed no sign of shifting in his hair-shirt vision of renewed austerity, which he blamed on the government’s disastrous inheritance from the Tories.

He claimed that denying pensioners winter fuel payment was not a decision he wanted to make, but that it was a “tough choice” that had been forced on him.

The left MPs, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, ridiculed this stance, pointing out that when “the government said it would lower energy bills, it cut winter fuel allowances for pensioners instead.

“The government said it wanted to reboot our economy, it wants to cut public investment instead. 

“The government said it would put an end to 14 years of Tory failure, it voted to keep the two child benefits cap instead.”

Urging a wealth tax and an end to privatisation in public services, they said: “A tough choice is deciding whether to heat your home or put food on the table. 

“Austerity is not a tough choice, it is a wrong choice.”

And Ms Graham, who leads Labour’s largest affiliate, agreed, saying: “To say there is no money to rebuild our industry and infrastructure, or to restore our public services, is simply not true.

“The top 50 families have more wealth than half our population.

“The profit margins of the average British firm have rocketed by 30 per cent since before the pandemic.

“If we taxed 1 per cent on the wealthiest 1 per cent, the so-called black hole would be gone.

“It’s time for a wealth tax on the super-rich and a tax on excess profits.”

She added that “we should not pit pensioners against workers.”

Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said: “Enduring more economic pain and hardship isn’t what people voted for.

“People don’t need a constant reminder that the Tories broke Britain.

“They need a new approach, not misguided fiscal rules that are set to make things worse.

“Labour’s refusal to tax the super-rich shows that business as usual is very much still in business.”

Sir Keir used his speech to blame the Tories for everything wrong in Britain, an approach which remains plausible for now, seven weeks into his government, but will not serve for very much longer.

He also recommitted to several key policies, including expanding workers’ rights, accelerated house-building, public ownership of rail, setting up Great British Energy and exploiting artificial intelligence.

But misery was the main message, with the country left anticipating tax rises and spending cuts in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Budget.

“Those with the broader shoulders should bear the heavier burden,” Sir Keir said — not the new government’s policy thus far, with pensioners and children in poverty paying the price.

Addressing the far-right riots, he blamed them on a “mindless minority of thugs” but added that they “didn’t happen in a vacuum.”

Simon Francis of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition warned that axing the winter fuel payment meant “that some older people will face the highest energy bills on record” which “has the potential to create a public health emergency.”

And the Stop the War Coalition, launching a petition against arms spending increases, pointed out that Sir Keir “says there’s a £22 billion black hole in the public finances, yet there’s always more money for endless wars.”