Labour has pledged to “rebuild Britain” and restore its economic credibility as the party’s big guns positioned it as the party of business and fiscal responsibility at its annual conference in Liverpool.
Rachel Reeves told delegates at a packed ACC conference hall that she intends to address them next year as Britain’s first female chancellor of the exchequer, and end “Tory misrule” over the economy. Meanwhile, party leader Keir Starmer assured a high-powered breakfast meeting of business leaders and investors that if Labour wins next year’s election, “you will come into government with us”.
The mood around the venue in the city’s docklands is bullish, as party members sense that Labour is on the cusp of a return to power 13 years after it was ousted by the Conservative Party. Large red banners hanging around the ACC promised that Labour will “get Britain’s future back”.
Reeves’s noon speech on Monday was noticeably light on specifics about Labour’s tax and spending plans, but heavy on rousing rhetoric that brought several thunderous ovations from delegates.
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“You cannot trust the Tories with our economy ever again,” the shadow chancellor said, decrying the fiscal drama that Britain has endured in recent years. Reeves repeatedly declared the mantra that she and Labour were “ready to serve, ready to lead, and ready to rebuild Britain”.
While she made no detailed new tax or spending pledges, she promised a new law to ensure that “any government making significant and permanent tax and spending changes will be subject to an independent forecast” from the Office of Budgetary Responsibility, the UK’s fiscal watchdog.
Reeves belted out several crowd pleasers, such as promises to make big online companies “pay their fair share”, as well as a “proper windfall tax” on oil and energy companies. She also said if Labour regained power, it would abolish so-called “non-dom” (non UK-domiciled) tax status that allows British residents from overseas cut their UK tax bills by basing their financial interests elsewhere.
Labour also plans to save £4 billion annually by halving government spending on consultants and clawing back Covid grants that were fraudulently claimed by some businesses in the pandemic. Reeves said she would appoint a “Covid corruption commissioner” to chase down “every penny”, with any cash retrieved diverted to health spending.
In a surprise move at the end of her formal address, a video was played in the hall in which former Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, gave Reeves, a trained economist, a formal endorsement to be Britain’s next chancellor.
Earlier, Starmer was also light on specifics at the breakfast gathering in the ACC, but keen to reassure business leaders that Labour can be trusted with the economy.
“I don’t think government can do your job better than you can,” he told the business leaders, embracing the political centre ground to which he has steadily tacked after winning the Labour leadership three years ago under the guise of a far more left-wing agenda.
“The Labour Party you see today is completely changed and I hope you can see that and feel that,” he said.
He also said the next election would be “all about the economy, because it should be and I want it to be”.
The party leader predicted that next year’s election campaign would be a dirty one. He claimed the Tories would “go low ... I am predicting that [the election] will descend into that place”.