Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is accused of squandering a chance to lay out a “real response to the cost of living problem” by Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the opening of her keynote address at the Labour Party’s Annual Conference in Liverpool.
“What did we get instead?” she asks. “Tax cuts for the top 1%, increased bankers bonuses, and more than £50bn piled onto the national debt every single year.
“Sterling is down, that means higher prices as the cost of imports rise,” she says.
She adds that with the cost of government borrowing up, taxpayers’ money will go into paying off debt.
“The cost of borrowing for working people will now go up too,” with higher mortgage repayments for families, she says.
“And all for what? Not to invest in industries of the future, not for our NHS, not for schools, but for tax cuts for the wealthiest, a return to trickle-down economics.”