FORMER Labour minister Stephen Pound has given his support to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, saying she is of “great quality”.
Speaking on GB News he said: “[Rachel Reeves] is not going to go. Look, if you’re interested more in party politics than you are in the economy of this nation, then you’ll be calling for her to go. It would be utterly disastrous for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to resign.
“Can you imagine the reaction on the bond markets? It would be Liz Truss all over again.
“We’ve simply got to realise that stability is the single most important factor we have in this country. To try to conflate a leak from the OBR with some sort of malfeasance on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is specious nonsense.
“And I think Kemi Badenoch does herself no favours at all when she actually calls into play these ridiculous, hyperbolic statements accusing her of some sort of malfeasance and some sort of reference to the Ethics Commissioner. It is absolute, utter nonsense.
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“We all know what happened. It’s the new platform they have within the Civil Service didn’t have sufficient firewalls. The thing with the OBR report was put up on that, it was released early.
“That is nothing to do with the quality, I consider the great quality, of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
“Well, I think honestly, if Kemi Badenoch had such a cool analysis, she’d have been a damn sight more impressive when she made this totally over the top attack.
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. And we know that this figure was actually about the headroom that they needed. I think there was a £4.6 billion headroom, they actually needed £16 billion.
“The reality is no Chancellor of the Exchequer that I can think of in my time, Tory or Labour or whatever, has ever sat down and said, ‘how can I screw the British people over? How can I squeeze more money?’
“Believe you me, we pensioners are in a pretty good place. We’ve got the triple lock.
“There’s no question that there is a problem in this country, a massive problem of productivity.
“Those figures of needing to earn £71,000, you’re actually lumping together a whole range of benefits, of child benefit, housing benefit, a whole range of benefits together. You can disaggregate that. I think it’s incentives. [They] are most important thing.
“We need a high wage economy; we do not need a race to the bottom.
“Freezing allowance just means it’s not increased. But if you just have a look at the rest of the budget. Look at the stuff about regional development. Look at the stuff about AI.
“We cannot be left in the slow lane whilst the rest of the world is racing down.”
