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Rachel Reeves, Britain’s shadow finance minister, said the UK’s current trading landscape pales in comparison to that of the US.
Chartered Institute of Management
Britain’s shadow finance minister on Tuesday lambasted the country’s business environment under the current Conservative government, saying companies currently deciding whether to invest in the UK or the US faced a decision ” obvious”.
Rachel Reeves of Labour, who is vying for the top job in finance in the upcoming election, said initiatives such as the US Inflation Reduction Act gave the country a clear advantage and the Great Britain needed to create an equally attractive framework for business investment.
“Companies say to me: if we have a choice between investing in the United States or investing in the United Kingdom, I am afraid that, at the moment, it is a given,” Reeves told a conference. by Chartered Management. Institute.
“Deeper capital markets, along with government support for these growing industries, means investing in the US makes sense in a way it doesn’t in the UK,” he said. she declared.
Reeves said that under Labor leadership, Britain would implement a “modern industrial strategy” encouraging government and business to work in partnership. She did not give specific details of such a plan.
The opposition politician added that feats such as the record-breaking rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK would not have been possible without long-standing partnerships between UK universities and businesses.
“In a time of great change, we need to have a partnership between business and government to seize some of these great opportunities that are before us,” she said.
“I don’t want to find ourselves, 30 years from now, looking back and wondering why we import all our vehicles because we didn’t make the batteries here, why do we import our steel because we didn’t moved to green steel, why we import our gas because we haven’t invested in hydrogen today.”
The 2024 elections in sight
Britain’s opposition Labor Party is gearing up for a possible victory in the country’s next general election, likely due next year but no later than January 2025.
Labor had a 17 point lead over the ruling Conservatives in recent YouGov pollmaintaining a consistent lead despite some shrinking gains since Liz Truss’ disastrous tenure in October.
Labor leader Keir Starmer has been criticized for pushing the party too far right, in a bid to woo businesses and undecided voters.
Still, Reeves said boosting economic growth in the UK, which continues to lag behind its G-7 peers, would be the “absolute central mission” of a new Labor government.
“It’s up to business to create jobs and prosperity, but it’s up to government to provide the framework to encourage businesses to make those choices to invest here in the UK and create those opportunities.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, for his part, has named economic growth one of his Conservative government’s five key priorities, while touting plans to make Britain the next Silicon Valley.