Keir Starmer has dodged a question aboout whether Rachel Reeves will still be his Chancellor at the next General Election.
The Prime Minister was quizzed by GB News’s Political Editor Christopher Hope about the “flatlining” UK economy after he set out ambitions to make the UK a global leader in the AI sector.
“Is the three-year wait for the benefits of AI too long to help the economy now? The pound is down, the economy is flatlining”, Chopper probed.
“You know this already. What’s your plan? Will you cut the benefits bill? And will Rachel Reeves be your Chancellor at the next general election?”
Starmer responded: “We’re going to stick to the fiscal rules. That is a very important thing that we’ve said throughout.
“We set out those fiscal rules very early on in the day because we knew that the missing ingredient in recent years has been economic stability.
“We’re determined to bring about that economic stability. That’s why the fiscal rules are absolutely central to what we do. The changes we’re bringing about, whether it’s industrial strategy, planning, energy, all of those are designed to ensure that we get the growth that we need.
“That’s why I’m confident in our mission for growth. I’m completely confident in my team. We never pretended, nor would anybody sensibly argue, that after 14 years of failure, you can turn around our economy and our public services before Christmas.
“Before the election, I said it’s not going to be possible to do this in six months. It’s going to take time. The question is, are you creating the conditions? Do you have the determination and are you pulling the right levers for growth?
“We are doing all of those underpinned by our fiscal rules.”