'If Reeves breaks Labour's promises on tax she should be removed'

Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith remembers the '70s power blackouts, and fears Labour could be pushing Britain 'backwards' into recession

- 

RACHEL Reeves should resign as Chancellor or be sacked if she breaks Labour's promise not to hike income tax, national insurance or VAT, according to Shadow Business and Trade Secretary Andrew Griffith. He warns that if she reneges on her manifesto pledge her credibility will be shredded and she will have no option but to go.

This key ally of Kemi Badenoch sees two main threats to Britain on the horizon - the Chancellor's November 26 Budget and former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner's “devastating” raft of measures to overhaul workers' rights and bolster trade unions, which is on the verge of becoming law.

Mr Griffith, 54, who served as the chief operating officer of Sky before entering politics, claims businesses are warning him the measures in the Employment Rights Bill could push the country into recession.

“I'm very sad to say but this will take us from being one of the more flexible labour markets in Europe to one of the least,” he says. “It will deter business from hiring”

The father of two remembers the power blackouts of the 1970s and fears the legislation will unleash a new era of industrial strife in a country already battling economic stagnation.

"Day by day," he says, "everybody under the age of 50 who never saw applied socialism in practice is having a firsthand life lesson on what it looks like to be led by a terribly, terribly dogmatic government that, when it has a plan at all, is to take us backwards, not forwards.”

He arrives for the interview with a mug illustrated with a mocked-up poster for a horror movie called “Job Killers”. It features the face of Ms Reeves alongside Angela Rayner who has left the Government after a row over a stamp duty underpayment - and his former opposite number Jonathan Reynolds, who was moved from his role as Business Secretary to Chief Whip in the reshuffle.