LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer said the current economic situation is “very serious” and is a “self-inflicted wound by the Government”.
He told GB News: “It is a very serious situation. You’ve seen the Bank of England’s move today. That comes on the back of the IMF statement earlier today, that comes on the back of the Bank of England statement earlier this week.
“And it’s a reaction to the markets. The markets aren’t some abstract thing. These are investors with huge amounts of money, who are signalling that they don’t have confidence in what the government did on Friday.
“The Government has lost control of the economy. That is a self inflicted wound. It’s not some event that was uncontrollable, internationally. It’s a self-inflicted wound by the Government.
“For what? For uncosted tax breaks for those earning hundreds of thousands of pounds. And now so many people will be looking at their mortgages, their prices, now their pensions and really worried, so you’ve got tax breaks for the very rich and price hikes, mortgage worries and now pension worries for working people.”
On Labour’s own plans, in an interview with Darren McCaffrey on GB News, he added: “We’ve got very clear rules that we will fund day-to-day and we will borrow to invest and are the fiscal rules.
“But let’s contrast this with the Government, they are borrowing for tax cuts for those earning hundreds of thousands of pounds, un-costed tax cuts for those earning hundreds of thousands of pounds.
“In relation to the energy price freeze, oil and gas companies have made excess profits. If you take them together with the energy sector, £170 billion of excess profits and the government says we won’t use any of that towards the cost of keeping the energy price freeze in place, we will put it all on borrowing.
“That is why markets have looked at what was said on Friday and don’t have confidence in what the Government is doing.
“That is why we’re in a very serious situation. That is why Parliament needs to be recalled.
“The Government needs to abandon the budget because we can’t see any more damage done along the lines we’ve seen in the last few days.”
Asked what Labour’s plan for immigration is, Sir Keir said: “To work with the National Crime Agency, not cut their budget as the Government was proposing to do, Because they’re the agency that can work upstream to tackle the smugglers who are causing this trickle of people, this number of people coming to the north coast of France.
“So we absolutely need to do that. We need to speed up the processes in this country because asylum claims are taking forever now under the Home Office.
“We need safe routes for those who are entitled to come here to claim asylum, but for the Government to talk the talk on this at the same time as they are cutting the funding or proposing to cut the funding of the National Crime Agency shows ,that they’re not serious about cutting this off at source upstream.
“When I was Director of Public Prosecutions, I worked on cross border operations in relation to trafficking.
“It can be done, but it can’t be done if you hold the National Crime Agency back.”
On the Labour MP suspended for racism, he said: “Well, in relation to what happened yesterday, the Labour Party was very clear. That was racist, and we took action straight away and removed the whip.
“But what’s happened with the Labour Party is that in the last two years, we have worked very, very hard to change the Labour Party to re-make the Labour Party so we could confidently put our plans before the public at this conference.
“And I think everybody who’s been at our conferences says the mood is one of a party that is ready to deliver ready to govern and having done the hard yards, changing the Labour Party we now are facing the country to say that we have a confident plan for the future which will change Britain for the better for the future.”
He ruled out governing in coalition with other parties: “We are heading, we’re going for a Labour majority. I’ve been very clear about that.
“And I was very clear that we wouldn’t do a deal with the SNP. If you look at the challenges we face as a country, then I do not believe putting a border between England to Scotland is going to help us address those central challenges.”
