Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride has said that Labour’s leadership crisis shows there is “fundamental dysfunctionality” within the party.
He told GB News: “All this turmoil is very bad for the country, because obviously you have a lot of challenges that we’re leaning into, not least the Iranian war and the spike in oil prices and lots of pressures that our country has.
“What’s happening is this chaos is feeding into higher borrowing costs, higher gilt yields within the markets, and so that is a big pressure that we’re facing that otherwise wouldn’t be there to the same degree.
“But I think almost irrespective of whether there’s all these noises off around a leadership contest, potentially, are a couple of basic facts that are a real problem for the country. One is that this government clearly never had a plan, particularly on the economy. It went into the last election saying it was going to bring stability, and it’s done quite the opposite.
“We’ve seen sluggish growth, high inflation, high unemployment, all of those undesirable things that have happened, people getting worse off. But also, what has been exposed very early on is that the Parliamentary Labour Party backbenchers do not have the backbone to actually take the decisions that the country needs.
“So for example, getting on top of the welfare bill, getting people off welfare into work so that we can get taxes down on businesses and get growth going at the same time as bearing down on the deficit and the debt. So we’ve really, irrespective, I would say, of whoever ends up leading the Labour Party in the coming weeks and months, you can’t get beyond the fundamental dysfunctionality, I’m afraid, of the Labour Party in Parliament.”
He added: “Whether it’s Angela Rayner or Wes Streeting or the Prime Minister stays, or whatever, these are matters for the party, but the overarching point is very clear, and that is, we do need stability.
“Now, look, we’re a country that’s not in a good place. We are facing all these extraordinary threats to our country. We’ve got to spend more on defence. We’ve got an aging population. We’re going to have support. We’ve got intergenerational unfairness in our country that needs addressing. We’ve got oil prices spiking.
“We need a strong economy, and we need a united, stable government. I’m afraid that’s not what we’ve got. There’s one other political point I would add, though, which is that I think we are seeing a drift to the left in the Labour Party. We’re seeing a prime minister who’s tacking to the left because he’s having to appease those who are against him.
“We have a lot of candidates out there, certainly in Angela Rayner, who I think are well to the left. And I think this whole path of extra borrowing and spending and taxing, which is so bad for our economy, is the direction of drift and travel that this party is going through, and that’s not good.”
