Labour is ready to fight the election on the economy – the sooner the better'

06 March 2024 , 18:01

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Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has hit out at the Tory Budget (Image: PA Wire/PA Images)

Over the past 14 years, our country has had five Prime Ministers, seven Chancellors and eleven, yes – eleven, plans for growth.

After all that Tory chaos and instability, with Britain entering recession, Mirror readers should have been able to expect a Spring Budget that provided some glimmer of hope for working families. Instead, all that was delivered was the latest chapter on 14 years of economic failure under the Conservatives that has left Britain worse off.

While Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt will spend the next weeks claiming everything is fine, Mirror readers will know that no amount of words can change the indisputable fact that the Conservatives have failed on the economy. After 14 years of chaos, working people are worse off with household monthly mortgage payments on the up, prices still rising in the shops, the tax burden at a seventy year high and the country hit by recession.

The reality is the Tories have had their chance - and they have failed time and time again. The Conservative Party can’t fix our broken economy because they are the reason it is broken. Rishi Sunak’s promise to grow the economy has been broken. In fact, our economy is now smaller than when he entered 10 Downing Street in 2022.

This isn’t political point-scoring. The impact of that abject failure is felt each and every day when families struggling to make ends meet, when young people can’t get a house and as people wait months for a hospital appointment. In the face of that failure, this Budget was all spin and no substance.

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There was no serious plan to get our economy growing, rescue our struggling public services, or make working people better. It’s time for change. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, the Labour Party has changed. Labour is now the party of economic security.

We will deliver a long-term plan to grow our economy to deliver more jobs, more investment and to put more money in people’s pockets. We will overhaul our broken planning rules so we can get Britain building. We will introduce a new industrial strategy to back British business to succeed in the industries of the future.

We will make work pay, with a genuine living wage and stronger rights at work. And we will set tough new spending rules because Labour will never repeat the mistakes of the Tories’ mini-budget which sent the cost of living and mortgage rates soaring. Labour is ready to fight the general election on the economy – and the sooner that election comes the better.

Rachel Reeves