Sir Keir Starmer accused Liz Truss of desperately holding on to power after she sacked her chancellor to counter the fierce backlash from the Tory party against her disastrous plan for growth.
Though Kwasi Kwarteng got the axe for his role in throwing the British economy into turmoil, “there is still one person clinging on”, the Labour leader told supporters in Barnsley on Saturday morning.
Sir Keir said there were “no historical precedents” for the chaos that followed Ms Truss and her former chancellor’s mini-Budget in which they launched several now abandoned tax-cutting policies that the markets took to be reckless.
“No doubt we will hear plenty of laughable excuses in the coming days,” Sir Keir said. “After 12 years of stagnation, that’s all her party has left but even they know she can’t fix the mess she has created.
“And deep down, her MPs know something else. They no longer have a mandate from the British people.”
The prime minister stood by her vision of a “low tax, high growth economy” for weeks until she was forced to concede that her premiership could not survive without a radical change in her top team.
Under extreme pressure from her own party, Ms Truss on Friday sacked Mr Kwarteng and handed the role of chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who wasted no time in breaking from the prime minister’s plan for Britain by signalling tax rises and spending cuts.
Sir Keir, in a nod to Neil Kinnock’s famous 1985 party conference speech, pointed to the “grotesque chaos of a Tory prime minister handing out redundancy notices to her own chancellor”.
He said the prime minister had proved she was hesitant at a time when “decisive action” was needed.
Starmer in Barnsley on Saturday
He said: “Britain has faced financial crises before but the prime ministers and chancellors who wrestled with them all acted fast.
“When their policies ran against the rocks of reality, they took decisive action.
“But this lot, they didn’t just tank the British economy, they also clung on as they made the pound sink. Clung on as they took our pensions to the brink of collapse.
“Clung on as they pushed the mortgages and bills of the British public through the roof.
“They did all of this – all the pain our country faces now is down to them.”
