Rachel Reeves needs to ‘get a grip’ after ‘tone deaf’ trip to China as Britain battles market turmoil, Mel Stride warns
MEL Stride has said Chancellor Rachel Reeves needs to “get a grip” after her “tone deaf” visit to China.
The Shadow Chancellor told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips she should be “reassuring” markets in the UK following turbulence on the gilt markets.
Mr Stride said: “The markets move fairly quickly, and sentiment and confidence is at the heart of the approach that a good Chancellor should take.
“Now, if you absent yourself and go halfway around the world when bond yields are rocketing up, particularly in this country, with very serious consequences, then you need to be at your station reassuring those markets and I’m afraid it’s rather tone deaf to not have got that in the first place.”
He added: “The fact that we are now paying about £12billion a year more on servicing our national debt as a result of these market moves has real implications for people.”
Mr Stride further stated: “We’ve seen in a matter of a short number of days now, yields on bonds rocket up, the cost of servicing our national debt go up.
“That £12billion could employ 300,000 nurses. It could pay for all our prisons and judges in the UK for a year.
“It could pay the pensioners who have had their winter fuel payment taken away from them, it could pay that for eight and a half years.
“That’s the size of the problem that she’s created and she should be here to reassure markets.”
Mr Stride also claimed he would “most definitely not” go ahead with a planned trip to China in Ms Reeves’ position.
He said the Chancellor should be “trying to give some sense that this Government gets the depth of the problem” on the gilt markets.
Mr Stride was asked about Conservative former prime ministers and chancellors that visited China during the last government on the BBC‘s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.
He said: “They weren’t going to China at a point that our economy was in significant distress.
“And it is completely wrong for the Chancellor at a point that we have this stress in the bond markets, with the consequences that I set out for people right up and down the country, their living standards, their businesses, their livelihoods, and so on.
“The Chancellor should be here at her station, reassuring markets and trying to give some sense that this Government gets the depth of the problem and it has some clear plan.”
He added: “I would most definitely not be in Beijing or Shanghai at the moment talking to the Chinese, cap in hand for some kind of deal, trade arrangements, etc, at a time that these kind of momentous things are happening around the UK economy.
Chinese takeaway won't fill UK coffers
IT IS almost 46 years to the day that a Labour PM returned from abroad to dismiss evidence that Britain was gripped by economic chaos, creating the famous Sun headline: “Crisis? What crisis?“
Unlike James Callaghan, Chancellor Rachel Reeves can be under no such illusions as she returns from China.
This crisis is real.
But as markets went into meltdown, she bizarrely headed to Beijing to announce a new investment deal worth a paltry £600million over five years.
That will not make much of a dent in the £9billion hit to public finances from the spiralling bond crisis.
As Tories claimed the Chancellor was a joke, making a laughing stock of Britain, she posed with a British bike firm that has frozen recruitment over her National Insurance tax grab.
Now, amid a plunging Pound and calls for her own head to roll, Reeves has ordered the Treasury to cut billions from the bloated benefits budget.
The Sun has long campaigned for massive welfare reform.
Payments for disability and health conditions alone are due to surge 60 per cent from £22billion to £35billion by 2029.
If she had tackled waste head-on in her first Budget, the Chancellor would not now be in such a tight spot.
But after her growth-strangling policies, there is no room for manoeuvre.
Sir Keir Starmer also has no choice.
The PM has to stand firm against all opposition from the Left of his party and drive the cuts through.
As for the Chancellor, her press conference in Communist China did not permit questions.
But as jittery markets open tomorrow, she had better prepare for the mother of all inquisitions.
“(Ms Reeves) needs to get a grip, and she should be here in order to do that.”
It comes after Ms Reeves signalled painful spending cuts are on the way as she vowed to “take action” to balance the books.
The Chancellor will slash billions from the welfare budget after market turmoil wreaked havoc on the nation’s finances.
After a press conference in Beijing, Ms Reeves told journalists: “I have been really clear that our fiscal rules are non-negotiable — that we will pay for day-to-day spending through tax receipts and we will get debt down as a share of GDP.
(Ms Reeves) needs to get a grip, and she should be here in order to do that.
Mel Stride
“Those fiscal rules that I set out in the Budget in October are non-negotiable and we will take actions to ensure we meet them.”
She was also accused of making Britain a laughing stock with only a puny investment deal.
Ms Reeves described her visit as a “significant milestone” in Britain’s relationship with Communist China — and said it would help our struggling economy.
But Tory MPs and business chiefs poured scorn on that after she announced just £600million of investment from China over five years.