LABOUR’S shadow business secretary has defended its energy plan and insisted that the country must make the best of its natural resources.
Jonathan Reynolds told GB News: “Look around the world from the Middle East to Scandinavia, there are state companies involved in maximising the opportunities from their own natural resources for the people of those countries.
“If those countries can do it, I think we can too. And I think some old-fashioned attitudes about what the relationship is between business and the state are not the way forward.
“This country will miss out unless there is a government willing to use its powers to get the best of those opportunities for the British people, and that’s what we’re about.”
Speaking to Tom Harwood on GB News, Mr Reynolds added: “What has surprised everyone across the country is the way that Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss have toasted what I would say has traditionally been the Conservatives best brand, which is essentially a notion that they might not be very kind or fair, but they are competent and you can trust them.
Commenting on the Government’s recent ecomomic announcements he said: “Frankly, what it means for everyone in this country is that they’re poorer today, and they can see that, I’m afraid looking to the future, what it means for mortgages and interest rates and inflation.
“There is a lot to worry about and we will also be the people who give us some hope for the future.”
“When you do borrow for day-to-day spending, you get the kind of reaction and actually the whole philosophy of this government has been what has lost the confidence of those financial markets.
“People know in this country you can’t be a politician who promises to cut taxes, spend more money and so on and magically that will pay for itself.
“That is the position of the Liz Truss government, and you’ve seen what it means once you lose that hard-earned credibility.
“Let’s be clear, the UK is an established major economy, you have to be going some to get the kind of negative reaction that Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss got on Friday, and it’s absolutely to the detriment of everybody.”
He said: “The reason you’ve got fiscal rules and the reason you have transparency in your public finances around things like letting the Office of Budget Responsibility look at budgets and also the reason by the way, why you don’t sack the senior civil servants at the Treasury in order to scapegoat him for the for the government’s own failings, is that all these things they raise the risk premium of the UK as a state and that means it costs us more money.
