The Conservative Shadow Chancellor has furiously hit out at Rachel Reeves over her Spring Statement and lost his cool in the House of Commons, to the point the Speaker of the House Lindsay Hoyle had to intervene.
Mel Stride scolded Rachel Reeves over her “emergency Budget” that has left the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to downgrade the UK’s economic growth from 2% to 1% this year.
Stride said in his Churchillian tone, “At the last Budget, the Rt Hon lady said she would bring stability to the public finances.
“But this statement – more appropriately referred to as an emergency budget – has brought her to a cold hard reckoning. She has become very fond recently to talking about how the world has changed, well of course, it has Mr Speaker.
“This country was growing at the fastest rate in the G7 only a year ago. And just as the OECD, and the Bank of England and other forecasters, and now we learn today the OBR have stated, growth has been halved this year.
“Cut in two as a consequence of the decisions and the choices that the Rt Hon lady made on her watch.
“She says that none of this is her fault. It’s the war in Ukraine, it’s President Trump, it’s tariffs, it’s President Putin, it’s the Tories‘ legacy – it is anybody but her!
“What the British people know is that this is a consequence of her choices. She is the architect of her own misfortune. She talked down the economy so that business confidence crashed through the floor. She coinfected a £22 billion black – a smokescreen to cover up the fact they reneged on their promises to the British people at the last election.
Stride added, “She rolled the dice on a wafer-thin margin, and she lost! Reckless, with her fingers crossed. She fiddled the targets and she missed them!”
The Speaker of the House then stepped and asked Stride to think about his wording of his statement.
The Shadow Chancellor said, “This is going to mean prices bearing down on households and on businesses, right across the country, because of her choices.”
Stride added, “She chose to be reckless with a sliver of headroom against her fiddled targets. She borrowed and spent and taxed like it was the 1970s.
“The Chancellor likes to tour the television studios and tell everybody they should be thankful that she will not be ramping up taxes in this ’emergency budget’ as she did before.
“But that will be cold comfort to the millions up and down the country waiting in fear and trepidation for the start of the new tax year, buckling under the burden of tax that’ll be rising to the highest tax burden on her watch in the history of our country.
“So can I ask (Reeves) if when she replies in a moment she will give that much-needed reassurance, particularly to businesses, that she will not be ramping up taxes still further in the autumn.”
Reeves laughed as Stride and she dismissing today’s Spring statement was an “emergency budget.”
