LABOUR’S shadow employment rights minister Justin Madders has called for an early General Election.
He said: “We would like an election straightaway, because the longer that this country has a Conservative government, the more damage is done.
“It’s pretty clear already, isn’t it, that the country have made up their minds about Liz Truss…if this is meant to be her honeymoon period, which all prime ministers have, then I think the Tory party is looking for a very quick divorce.
“But people are already feeling the impact of their Premiership. They’re going to be paying far more in their mortgages. We know that there are many challenges in the cost of living crisis that are still not being addressed. So the sooner that we can get rid of this government the better.
“I feel, obviously, that the Conservative Party are not going to go for a general election when they’re so far behind in the polls and we may be waiting for rather longer than we would like.”
In an interview with Stephen Dixon and Anne Diamond on GB News, he was asked how Labour would deal with the cost of living crisis.
“We actually announced our plans back in August and we said we would keep the energy price cap where it is at the moment,” he said.
“There’s a two pronged approach, actually, you’ve not only got to deal with the immediate issues with the increase in energy costs, you’ve also got to have a long term plan to make sure we’re not in this position.
“Again, that means improving energy security, and making the most of the natural resources that we have in this country, which means that we’ve got to get back wind power, but to get more investment in solar and nuclear in hydrogen.
“There are lots of ways that we can invest in our futures to make sure that we’re not so reliant on fossil fuels and world energy price spikes in the future.”
Asked about investment in energy security, Mr Madders said: “It does require long term investment but the sooner we start with that, the sooner we will reap the dividends. There’s plenty of studies out there that show that the longer you leave these investments, the more expensive it becomes.”
“What we have said is there is immediate help on offer. We’ve come up with our price cap and crucially, we’ve explained how we’re going to pay for it as well, we’ve made very clear that we will do more with the windfall tax that was belatedly introduced by the government earlier this year.
“That will actually ensure that our plans are costed. And it’s obviously one of the reasons why we’ve had this economic turmoil in the last couple of weeks is because the Government came forward with plans and didn’t have any explanation as to how they were going to pay for them.”
