THE Labour Party is to blame for the return of George Galloway to Parliament, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury Bim Afolami has said.
Asked about David Davis breaking with Parliamentary procedure by refusing to introduce him in the House of Commons, he told GB News: “The fact that people don’t seem to want to do it is an indication of the standing with which he’s held in the House of Commons, which is not very high.
“But we’re in this position really because of the weakness of the Labour leader and frankly, the fact that Labour still hasn’t changed.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he continued: “Labour selected a candidate in a very safe Labour constituency, so there was lots of competition for that job, who had abhorrent views about Jewish people and horror views about the war in Israel.
“Then you had a Labour leader, Keir Starmer, who refused for days to acknowledge them and I’m afraid that is why George Galloway is entering the House of Commons.”
His comments came after he announced £360 million of Government investment in cutting-edge manufacturing projects.
Mr Afolami said: “This £360 million is really important, into British advanced manufacturing. That’s going to be in areas of zero carbon flights, so that flights that will have no carbon emissions, is going to be on life-saving drugs, and it’s going to be on electric vehicles.
“This is £360 million that is a partnership between the Government and industry. So it’s both sides coming together to create growth and advanced manufacturing for Britain.”
On the prospect of tax cuts in the Budget, he said: “What I will say is the Chancellor has been very clear over the weekend and before that of the need to move to a lower tax economy. Why? Not out of some ideological obsession, but because that’s how you return more money into people’s pockets and that’s how you grow the economy.
“Lower tax economies in the world, whether it be in North America or Asia and elsewhere, grow faster broadly speaking than high tax ones. So we are moving towards that and we started this in January this year with a cut in National Insurance for average earners, which was about £450 pounds for your average earner.
“We started that process. It’s a long journey. But what we won’t do is we will not borrow extra to fund tax cuts because that’s unsustainable and increases inflation.
“We’re going to take that balanced, prudent approach, growing the economy and tax cuts over time is definitely the way to do that, but I will not get into specifics.”
