Mel Stride ensured Reeves heard what we are all thinking

WHAT a spectacular day in the office for Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride. Against the gloomy backdrop of poor growth predictions and increasing economic uncertainty, his stinging rebuttal to Rachel Reeves’s spring statement practically wrote itself.

- Esther Krakue

“This is a consequence of her choices. She is the architect of her own misfortune,” he told the House — and he was right. It’s what everyone was thinking.

Stride was also correct when he said the Chancellor “fiddled” her target, which she then missed. Despite vowing to grow her way out of an economic and fiscal crisis, the Government will borrow £10billion more than expected this year and a further £47.5billion will be spent over the next Parliament.

Stride was right too when he threw the failures of Reeves’s past policy decisions back in her face; the changes to fiscal rules, the hike in National Insurance, winter fuel payment cuts and the family farms inheritance tax. These were all choices, he said — and she made all the wrong ones.

The most brutal blow, however, came when he pointed out how Reeves was blaming everyone but herself for stalled growth. Trump’s tariffs, Putin’s war in Ukraine and the Conservatives won’t change the fact that Britain’s economy is a mess of her own creation.