‘Desperate gamble’, Britain’s Labour criticizes government economic plans

Content of the article

LONDON – Britain’s main opposition Labor Party slammed the Tory government’s economic plans on Friday, describing the new prime minister and finance minister as “two desperate gamblers in a casino” who had run out of ideas.

Prime Minister Liz Truss has long signaled she wants to break with what she calls “orthodoxy” at the finance ministry to try to spur economic growth, but the scale of spending in her government’s mini-budget took many by surprise.

Content of the article

Praised by many of his supporters for returning to what they said was true conservative thinking about the economy in prioritizing tax cuts and tax breaks, others expressed concern about the lack of detail about how much it would cost and who would pay for it. would pay

Content of the article

Rachel Reeves, Labour’s head of finance policy, said Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng had prioritized big business and “bankers’ bonuses” over workers based on a discredited theory of “trickle down economics”. .

“The prime minister and the chancellor (minister of finance) are like two desperate gamblers in a casino chasing a losing career,” he told parliament.

“The argument the Chancellor is making today is not a great new idea, not a game changer… It is all based on an outdated ideology that if we simply reward the already rich, the whole of society will benefit “.

He also repeated US President Joe Biden’s comment that he was “sick and tired of the trickle down economy”, rejecting the idea that tax cuts for the rich can benefit everyone.

Content of the article

Taking aim at the lack of independent scrutiny of the government’s plans, Reeves described Kwarteng’s statement as “a budget without figures, a menu without prices”.

“What does the chancellor have to hide?” he said, a point echoed by Conservative lawmaker Mel Stride, who also questioned why the government had gone ahead with the plans without new forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Truss’ team has explained the lack of input from the independent OBR by saying the crisis with spiraling energy prices meant the government had to move quickly, meaning no there was time for the agency to complete its analysis. They also argued that a “tax return” did not require such forecasts.

Kwarteng said an OBR forecast would come later this year, when the government would outline a more comprehensive budget.

Content of the article

While Labor and other opposition lawmakers bit back their criticism of the government’s tax return, supporters of Britain’s new government praised its radicalism.

Some said previous Conservative governments, in power for 12 years and five of them in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, should have adopted the policies long ago.

Praising the radicalism, Tory MP David Jones told Reuters: “We actually need it because ‘steady as it is’ wasn’t going to cut the mustard.” (Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Kate Holton, Paul Sandle and Catherine Evans)