To the Cliveden Literary Festival, where Health Secretary Wes Streeting has offered up his support for Sir Keir Starmer’s Brexit attack strategy. The Prime Minister is planning to use Brexit – and Nigel Farage’s part in the campaign – as a way to both excuse the difficult decisions that will be made in next month’s Budget and as a means to take the fight to Reform UK. How interesting…
Speaking at a panel event at the festival, Streeting doubled down on the Brexit message, telling his audience about how much Brexit can be blamed for the UK’s low productivity and growth:
It’s part of it. There’s no doubt that that’s the other problem we’re dealing with. I’m glad Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak.
Going on, Streeting insisted he had ‘enormous respect’ for people who voted to ‘take back control’ – but said there hadn’t been much rigorous debate about the economic problems that had arisen as a result of the UK leaving the European Union. The Health Secretary fumed:
This has been my frustration about it… We were warned it was going to have an economic impact and it has. And it’s hit our country hard, so we’re having to deal with Brexit.
We’re also trying to have a more rational conversation with our biggest and nearest trading partners, the European Union, by resetting that relationship and beginning to build back what we have lost.
Streeting’s words come as part of a larger Labour strategy to take on Reform over Farage’s role in Brexit, with the PM keen to argue that Farage used ‘easy sloganeering’ during the campaign but didn’t have a plan for after the referendum. It’s an attack line that will be used to suggest that Reform is simply offering quick fixes rather than thought-through policy proposals in an attempt to persuade voters to come back to the reds. But given Farage’s party has been polling better than Starmer’s army for months, while the Labour lot have continually U-turned on issues like winter fuel payments and welfare reform, the PM certainly has his work cut out in winning back voter trust…
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