Rachel Reeves has risked furious backlash from Labour left-wingers after delivering a speech channelling Margaret Thatcher.
The Shadow Chancellor will warn in a speech today that Britain needs a “decade of national renewal”, similar to that ushered in by the Tories’ radical leader.
She will tell City chiefs: “As we did at the end of the 1970s, we stand at an inflection point, and as in earlier decades, the solution lies in wide-ranging supply-side reform to drive investment, remove the blockages constraining our productive capacity, and fashion a new economic settlement, drawing on evolutions in economic thought. A new chapter in Britain’s economic history.”
While she did warn that unlike Mrs Thatcher’s boom in the 1980s Labour’s growth plan would be “broad-based, inclusive and resilient”, favourable coverage from traditionally Tory-leaning newspapers sparked fury from those on the left.
Alex Nunns, Jeremy Corbyn’s former speechwriter, fumed that “large parts of the country have not recovered” from the Thatcherite revolution Ms Reeves now hopes to replicate.
He tweeted: “Reeves vows an economic take-off similar to the Thatcher years. Let’s hope not. Thatcher came in and, in 1980-1, plunged the country into the sharpest, deepest recession since the war to that time, shutting down swathes of industry.”
Left-wing magazine Tribune warned that he claim that Mrs Thatcher “‘delivered a decade of national renewal’ is the latest attempt to justify the suffering caused by her policies”.
Labour’s own former Scottish leader Richard Leonard blasted his party’s shadow chancellor for “rewriting history”.
The still-serving MSP fumed: “In the 1980s manufacturing was butchered, factory after factory closed, privatisation was let rip, unemployment rocketed, profits boomed, the wage share fell, the rich got richer, and inequality soared”.
“No rewriting of history. Thatcher didn’t renew the economy, she broke it”.
Meanwhile the Corbynite campaign group Momentum said the speech proves that Mrs Reeves and the Labour Leadership is “out of touch with the Labour movement and Labour values”.
“We want to overturn Thatcher’s disastrous settlement, not recreate it.”
Mrs Reeves is expected to tell the Mais Lecture that Labour will “bring together public and private sectors, in a national mission directed at restoring strong economic growth across Britain”.
She will say: “Growth achieved through stability – built on the strength of our institutions. Investment – through partnership between active government and enterprising business.
“And reform – of our planning system, our public services, our labour market, and our democracy.”
Mrs Reeves previously told the Mail on Sunday that her generation of women were “of course” influenced by Mrs Thatcher.
She said: “Whether you agree with her or not, she smashed glass ceilings and shifted the boundaries. You’d be foolish not to recognise that.”
