"Mel Stride is rabble rousing"
The shadow chancellor Mel Stride has been criticised for claiming that the government wants to reverse Brexit and that it should stop blaming Brexit for the UK’s economic woes.
Delivering the Mais Lecture at Bayes Business School today, Rachel Reeves said “Brexit did deep damage”.
She added that although trade deals with India, the US and other allies are “extremely helpful and beneficial”, that “no trade deal with any individual nation” can outweigh the importance of the UK’s relationship with the EU.
Reeves said that “closer alignment [with the EU] is the right course for Britain”, and that this will require the government “to make, and win, the political arguments”.
In response to Reeves’ proposals for closer ties with the EU and the single market, the Tory shadow chancellor accused the chancellor and prime minister of wanting “to row back on Brexit”.
Stride claimed: “Under increasing pressure, having mismanaged the economy, Reeves would rather point the finger at Brexit than accept their poor choices have been a disaster for our economy.”
Joe Meighan, Public affairs manager at the European Movement, told Left Foot Forward: “Mel Stride is rabble rousing, the Government have been clear about their red lines, and these do not include reversing Brexit.
“To suggest, as Stride does, that the Government points too heavily to what was perhaps the worst self-inflicted economic and political move in modern memory is absurd. Whatever choices this Government has made have been constrained by the disastrous decision and execution of our exit from the European Union.
“We welcome any steps the Chancellor is willing to take to repair the damage. While we understand they will be within the “red lines” of the manifesto, we urge that in future, nothing should be off the table.”
Responding to Reeves’ Mais Lecture, Naomi Smith, Chief Executive at Best for Britain, which campaigns for closer UK-EU ties, said: “This is a welcome and overdue shift in tone: the Chancellor is right that the UK economy needs alignment with Europe to achieve growth, as independent analysis by Frontier Economics makes clear, and our polling confirms British voters overwhelmingly support, no matter their political persuasion.”
Smith added: “While alignment on food, drink and energy are excellent first steps, they barely move the growth needle, because the real boon for the UK and the EU, comes from deeper cooperation across the board: aligning all industrial and service sectors would claw back half of the GDP the OBR calculates the UK lost since Brexit.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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