The damage was done in Downing Street, but working people are paying the price.
We’ve had four Tory Chancellors in four months and almost as many mini Budgets. But each time it gets worse.
Our proud country is being held back by this Tory economic crisis – and across the country families and pensioners are being let down.
Britain deserves better than these clowns. As a pensioner said to me in Yorkshire this weekend: “They have created this mess, but they are making us all pay to clear it up.”
As a result of the choices the Tories have made, we are facing the biggest drop in living standards in generations – prices soaring, growth plummeting, wages squeezed, investment down and public services crumbling.
People are already struggling to pay their bills and mortgages or manage the weekly food shop. Many families are really worried about what this winter and next year will bring.
The Tory chaos of the last few months – including those unfunded tax cuts for the richest people in the country – has done huge damage.
But the problem isn’t just 12 weeks of Tory chaos. It is 12 years of Tory failure on economic growth.
We’ve already had one decade of lost growth since 2010. The real value of wages is still lower today than it was when the Tories came to power.
But now it looks like they are driving us towards a second decade of low growth too. The UK is forecast to have the lowest growth of any of the G7 group of major economies.
All countries have been affected by Covid and by the Russian assault on Ukraine. But, here in the UK, the damage the Government has done has made things much worse.
The Tories seem to want to get us into a doom loop where lower growth leads to higher taxes, lower investment, squeezed wages and run down public services, which hit growth all over again.
Our economy has grown by an average 1.4% a year under the Tories compared to 2.1% in the previous Labour years. The cost of their failure is 24 Tory tax rises this Parliament.
To add insult to injury, Jeremy Hunt refused to close the tax loophole that is letting major oil and gas companies off from paying a proper windfall tax on excess profits.
He won’t tackle bankers’ bonuses and he refused to adopt Labour’s plan to abolish non-dom tax status.
If you choose to live in Britain then you should be paying tax fairly here.
But our country has incredible potential – the talent and effort of millions of people and thousands of businesses should mean we can build a great future if we have a strong plan.
That’s why Labour’s Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have set out a serious plan to boost growth and prosperity in the UK, with a modern industrial strategy based around skills, cutting- edge green technology, and manufacturing that we can export to the world.
We led the world with technology and ideas in the Industrial Revolution – we can do so again. And we should be boosting town centres by fixing business rates so shops, pubs and small businesses get a fair deal.
I’m optimistic about Britain’s future. But our country deserves so much better than this Tory chaos.
