Rachel Reeves echoes Margaret Thatcher as she says Britain must rebuild its ... trends now
Britain must rebuild its economic 'resilience' in the face of international turmoil, Rachel Reeves insisted last night.
The shadow chancellor's key speech drew parallels with 1979 when Margaret Thatcher defeated Labour, saying Britain is at an 'inflection point'.
Ms Reeves claimed the UK must not rely on 'states whose interests conflict with our own' as she called for a beefed-up industrial strategy and hit out at a 'reckless' pursuit of globalisation.
The remarks reflect the growing view among many politicians in the West that, after the turbulence caused by the pandemic and amid growing tensions over Taiwan, they must move away from over-reliance on China.
Despite the allusion to the transformation of the country in the 1980s, the shadow chancellor made plain that she was not aligning the party to Thatcherite thinking and committed Labour to scrapping trade union reforms brought in under the Conservatives.
Britain must rebuild its economic 'resilience' in the face of international turmoil, Rachel Reeves (pictured) insisted last night
The shadow chancellor's key speech drew parallels with 1979 when Margaret Thatcher (pictured) defeated Labour, saying Britain is at an 'inflection point'
The globalisation reference is unlikely to endear Ms Reeves, who looks set to become Britain's first female chancellor, to many of those from the party's old Blairite wing, who have been happy to sell off UK assets over the years and still rue the UK's departure from the EU.
She said in the Mais Lecture in the City of London: 'To pursue ever closer economic integration as an end in itself, not as a means to domestic prosperity, is economically naïve and politically reckless.
'We must strike the appropriate balance between openness to global trade and resilience at home.'
Ms Reeves came under fire both from the Labour left – as Corbynites attacked her over the parallels drawn with Mrs Thatcher – as well as Jeremy Hunt.
The Chancellor told MPs that Labour's economic policy was a 'black hole filled with platitudes' and questioned how the party would find 'literally billions of pounds to fund unfunded spending pledges'.
And there was push-back from the unions too, with Unite general secretary Sharon Graham accusing Ms Reeves of
