Britain is paying more to borrow than any other major Western economy. So why is Labour preoccupied with internal power struggles? In a special live address to members of the press, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride delivers his most forensic account yet of Britain's fiscal predicament and the Conservative Party's plan to fix it.
Gilt yields at their highest in the G7, higher even than Portugal, Spain and Greece – not primarily because of the deficit or the debt stock, but because Britain has become an inflation outlier, and markets are pricing in the risk that the situation gets worse.
When Josh Simons stepped aside for Andy Burnham on a single Friday, yields jumped 18 basis points. Stride puts a number on it: a Burnham penalty already costing the equivalent of £300 per working household before the by-election writ has even been served.
The broader charge sheet against the current government is laid out with methodical precision: a deficit that ran 75% above inherited plans in Labour's first year and again in its second; a quarter of a trillion pounds in additional borrowing across a single Parliament; fiscal rules changed to permit more borrowing the moment they became inconvenient; and a Prime Minister too weakened by his own MPs to take the welfare reforms his Chancellor can no longer avoid.
Against this, Stride sets out the Conservatives' golden rule — for every pound of savings identified, at least half goes to deficit reduction — and makes the case that it is the only serious fiscal commitment on offer. Reform's numbers don't add up, he argues, and its representatives have said so themselves on air. Labour's leadership contenders are, in their different ways, each a version of the same problem.
Following his speech, the Shadow Chancellor takes questions on quantitative tightening, the triple lock, the OBR's limitations, defence investment and the EU.
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