Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride has been grilled on his "ironic" pledge to "rewire" Britain's economy, as GB News host Ben Leo claimed the minister missed a "golden opportunity".Ahead of a speech today on the Conservative economic plan, Stride told GB News that "productivity and growth have been too slow".FULL STORY HERE.
00:00Good morning, Mr Stride, thank you for your company. Lots to talk about this morning, not least the winter fuel payment U-turn.
00:09What's the Tories' take on this?
00:14Well, you know, it's yet to be seen exactly what this looks like, who's going to get it.
00:20It was a huge mistake of this government to have, as one of its first actions, means-tested that winter fuel payment.
00:27It meant that pensioners last winter, of those living below the poverty line, about 80% of them did not receive that payment.
00:35We were told at the time by Lucy Powell, the leader of the House of Commons, the Labour politician, that this was in order to, amongst other things, help avoid a run on the pound.
00:45It was completely crazy when they did it at the time. It was the wrong thing to do.
00:50But we'll wait to see exactly what the detail is now and whether this can be brought in to help people in time this winter.
00:56But a lot of this U-turn, of course, is because of the pressure that we, as a party, have been putting on this government in the House of Commons.
01:05We'll be each later on this morning, aren't you, Mr Stride, talking about economic stability and a radical rewiring of the UK economic model.
01:14What do you mean by that?
01:15So what I mean is for too long, probably the last couple of decades since the global financial crisis in 2008, at least, the economy has not performed in a way that has been appropriate for the needs of both the people of our country and the challenges that we face.
01:33Productivity and growth have been too slow and if we're to tackle that, we need to have a deep, long think about everything from our tax system, the level of the tax burden, getting that down.
01:44We need to look at the size of the state, getting that smaller.
01:47We need to look at our skills mix as we bring net migration down, how our higher education is working, how universities are working, whether they're delivering.
01:56We need to get energy costs down because they're grossly uncompetitive.
02:00We need to get building, not just houses, but roads and reservoirs and railways and we need to tackle welfare in a very significant manner.
02:09Now, if we can do all those things, we can create an economy that is much more vibrant, much more supportive of business and can go out and create the wealth and the jobs and the, you know, the tax payments.
02:20Mr Stride, sorry to interject, sorry to interject, since 2008, the party who was in power for that time was your party.
02:29So, I mean, first of all, how do you expect people to trust the Conservatives?
02:32But lastly, you're talking about a rewire of the economic model.
02:38You had a chance and indeed the nation had a chance to have that very thing under Liz Truss.
02:42She says she was stitched up by the OBR, the Bank of England, but you had that chance.
02:46And you yourself, Mr Stride, publicly denounced her.
02:51You didn't support Liz Truss in that endeavour.
02:53So, it's a bit ironic of you trying to talk about an economic rewire now when you had the golden opportunity a few years ago.
03:01So, the most important thing is if we're going to rewire the economy and have an economy that is thriving and growing is we've got to act with fiscal responsibility.
03:10In other words, the numbers have always got to add up.
03:12We can't just offer sweeping tax cuts, for example, as reform are, without explaining exactly how we're going to pay for those.
03:19And one of the things I will be saying this morning is to recognise, as I said at the time, incidentally, that the approach that was taken at the back end of 2022 in that mini budget was not fiscally responsible.
03:30And we have to own up to that and we have to be honest about that.
03:34Because what this country needs is a party now that is going to have fiscal responsibility hardwired into its DNA.
03:41But you never gave her a chance, Mr Stride.
03:43That's going to be the Conservative Party.
03:44We will never take...
03:45Sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you.
03:47Sorry, apologies for interjecting.
03:48You never gave Liz Truss a chance.
03:51Many backbench Tory MPs and senior MPs turned on her and she was pushed into a corner.
03:55So you never gave Liz Truss's goal for growth a chance.
04:01The problem was fundamentally that if you go out there with tens of billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts in what was then a fairly inflationary environment,
04:12you start to lose the confidence of the markets and then you start to lose control of the economy.
04:17Now, we very quickly put that right.
04:19Within a matter of weeks, we had settled things down again.
04:21But nonetheless, there was a lesson to be learned then.
04:24We have currently two parties.
04:27We have the Labour Party that is messing up the economy, taking all sorts of bad economic decisions,
04:32blowing their fiscal headroom, being economically irresponsible.
04:36We've got a reform party that is coming out with all sorts of commitments that are completely unfunded,
04:42that will be economically ruinous and fiscally irresponsible.
04:45We have to now be that party that will be absolutely ironclad when it comes to having fiscal responsibility right at our heart.
04:53But never again will we come out with commitments that we cannot explain, how we can fund those.
04:59We need to maintain the confidence of markets and that's exactly what our policies going forward are going to do.
05:05So, we have to just step back and think we are now.
