A Newcastle MP accused Liz Truss of having “no plan” to deal with the economic crisis gripping the UK, after the Prime Minister’s Tory conference speech.
The PM promised to “get Britain moving” as she addressed Conservative members in Birmingham on Wednesday, following a chaotic few days that have seen a U-turn on plans to scrap the 45p top rate of income tax and dissent from within her own cabinet over a refusal to increase benefits in line with inflation. She told the audience that she was ready to make “difficult but necessary” choices and attacked a so-called “anti-growth coalition” including opposition parties, unions, and “Brexit deniers”.
But with no new policy announcements from Ms Truss on Wednesday, Newcastle North MP Catherine McKinnell accused the government of failing to tackle the big problems facing the nation. The Labour MP said: “Despite the country facing cost of living, energy and climate crises, with public services overstretched following successive Conservative governments, no plan or agenda was set out by our new Prime Minister. This is not a game, this is people’s livelihoods and futures.
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“Liz Truss’ speech shows that she is completely out of touch, with no understanding of her own appalling record. She has been in successive cabinets that have delivered the flat wages and low growth that she railed against in her speech.”
Jarrow MP Kate Osborne claimed that the Prime Minister gave “no hope to my constituents” and is “not listening to what our country needs”. She added: “Instead we were subject to promises of deregulation, of more attacks on workers and no plans to deal with the NHS crisis or the struggles our communities face every day.
“The political choices successive conservative Prime Ministers made caused this cost of living crisis. Truss is promising more of the same.”
Greenpeace protesters holding a flag which read “who voted for this?” were ejected from the hall after disrupting Ms Truss’ speech. After chaos in financial markets sparked by Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget, the PM pledged to “keep an iron grip on the nation’s finances”.
In a message to the public, she said “we have your back” and she was working “flat out to ensure people can get through this crisis”. Conservative MP for Berwick and new transport secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan told PA that Ms Truss “rocked it”.
She added: “The Prime Minister gets what the country needs and has the sheer determination to make sure we are going to deliver for our people.”
Levelling up secretary Simon Clarke, the MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, said: “We are the Party that will deliver the economic growth that makes people better off and is the only way to support strong public services - both of which are fundamental to levelling up.”
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