Labour is inheriting a ‘really strong economy’ – Former Chief Secretary to the Treasury

We spoke to Chris Philp, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and Former Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: There is a new law to prevent the Liz Truss disastrous mini budget ever happening again, and you, of course, came on Channel 4 News famously and defended it at the time. Do you think this is a good measure to protect Britain from any future madness?

Chris Philp: I think the OBR is an important institution, and what I’d like to see is if Rachel Reeves comes to parliament in the near future talking about the books, I’m assuming she will therefore be coming to parliament with an OBE hour forecast, because if she comes to parliament making claims about the public finances, claiming they’re worse than they really are, without an OBR forecast, that of course won’t have any credibility.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But you are now a fan of the OBR, because obviously the famous thing about that budget was there was no OBR report that went with it, and that’s why it didn’t have any credibility and that’s why everything went mad.

Chris Philp: I think there’s lessons to learn from that. But in terms of the economy now, that’s being handed over to Labour, we’ve got the highest growth in the G7 so far this year, we have those inflation numbers coming out, I think yesterday, down at 2% on target, lower than the eurozone, lower than the USA. Wages growing much faster than inflation and unemployment 4%, half of what it was under the last Labour government. So Rachel Reeves and the incoming Labour administration are inheriting a really strong economy, and any claims that she may try and make in the coming days, that somehow it’s worse than she thought it was, have no credibility whatsoever, particularly if they’re not accompanied by an OBR forecast.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: The thing is, you’re doing a valiant job, as you always do, of putting your side’s argument.

Chris Philp: The facts.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But you are not a real opposition yet, are you? You don’t know whether you’re really going to be the shadow leader of the house. We don’t have a new leader, Rishi Sunak, sort of doing this sort of decent opposition thing for as long as he has to before he escapes. And the worry is that we don’t really have an opposition at the moment.

Chris Philp: That’s not entirely fair. We’ve got obviously a diminished number of MPs, but we’re all working hard in our new roles and we are going to hold the Labour government to account. Where they do things we agree with, and many of the items in the King’s Speech, as many as a third of them, are things that the previous Conservative government were in the process of doing, obviously we’ll constructively support those. But where they do things we disagree with, for example, repealing various trade union and strike laws that’ll make it easier, that makes strikes more common, if they’re going to load up employment regulation, that’ll actually probably destroy jobs or make it harder for companies to create jobs, those kind of things we will obviously oppose.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But what do you think will change according to who the leadership is? We saw that with you dancing on the head of a pin between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak and defending them all as right, even though they were sort of diametrically opposed. So that’s the real problem, isn’t it? When you say we’ll oppose what we disagree with, you don’t really know what you disagree with.

Chris Philp: Obviously, inevitably, we’re going through a leadership contest, we’re going to have that debate and we’re going to work out the future direction. But in the meantime, and you heard Rishi Sunak doing it on the floor of the Commons today, I think striking the right balance between obviously accepting graciously the result of the election, saying that we’ll constructively support the government where we agree but oppose where we disagree. And things like not wanting to see loads more strikes because trade union legislation the Labour government are proposing to strip away, not wanting to see onerous employment regulations imposed that will destroy jobs. Those are things that I think all Conservatives of all flavours will agree with.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So do you think this idea of a sort of a Conservative beauty contest over the summer, and going into the Conservative Party conference, is the best way to choose a leader? It’s basically what happens when David Cameron got the leadership.

Chris Philp: Yeah, that’s my view. That is my view. I think a longer process, a bit like the one in 2005 that led to David Cameron, is what I would personally think is the best idea. I’ve made that case internally. I understand the party board is meeting tomorrow morning to set the timetable, so we’ll know more then, but I think a longer, more thoughtful process is the right way to do it.