Andrew Neil has ripped into Rachel Reeves over Labour’s economic plans.
The veteran broadcaster said it was “remarkable” that Labour did not have more “fresh or radical thinking” after more than a decade in opposition.
Mr Neil, widely regarded as Britain’s toughest political interrogator, warned that the party would “double down” on “current failed ways”.
It comes after the shadow chancellor used a major speech lasting almost an hour to set out her vision for if Sir Keir Starmer wins the next general election.
Writing in his Daily Mail column, Mr Neil said: “Reeves will inherit record public spending. She will add to it. She will inherit a record tax burden. She will add to that too (she certainly has no plans to reduce it).
“We have lived through a messy period of big-government conservatism. She proposes even bigger government. As national scepticism about the cost and wisdom of a headlong rush to Net Zero carbon emissions grows, she plans to proceed pell-mell at an even faster, more expensive rate.”
Mr Neil hit out at Ms Reeves’s comparison between now and the late 1970s when former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher came to power.
He said: “She wanted us to know that her takeover of the Treasury would be an ‘inflection point’ in history, much like Margaret Thatcher moving into 10 Downing Street in 1979, though what she has in store bears no resemblance to a new Thatcherite transformation of the country (largely the opposite, in fact).
“She promised to ‘fashion a new economic settlement’, though beyond vague generalities we still have no idea what that would look like, and a ‘decade of national renewal’.
“Above all, she heralded a ‘new chapter in British economic history’ (shades of Thatcher again) but, in reality, she offered more of what we’ve had too much of already.”
During her address to the annual Mais Lecture in the City of London on Tuesday, Ms Reeves pitched herself as Labour’s Baroness Thatcher.
She said that Britain stands “at an inflection point” like it did “at the end of the 1970s”, a period that paved the way for Baroness Thatcher’s premiership and her sweeping economic reforms, including moves towards the privatisation of public services.
But the shadow chancellor said that “unlike the 1980s, growth in the years to come must be broad-based, inclusive, and resilient”.
