By Elizabeth Piper and Andrew McCaskill
LIVERPOOL, England (Reuters) – Britain’s Labor Party will unveil plans on Monday to set up a national wealth fund to invest in green projects that will benefit the public, in the opposition party’s response to the Conservative government’s approach to tax cuts.
At their annual conference, Labor lawmakers are feeling a change in fortunes after a punitive loss in the 2019 election, feeling they can now offer voters a real choice after the government announced a “growth plan” that delivered tax cuts mostly to larger and wealthier businesses.
The so-called mini-budget has opened a divide between the Conservatives headed by Liz Truss and Keir Starmer’s Labor Party, which wants to use the years leading up to the election expected in 2024 to prove his team is ready for power.
Labour’s chief financial policy officer, Rachel Reeves, will tell the conference in the northern English city of Liverpool that the party wants to “build a British industry” using a national wealth fund similar to those in Norway and Singapore, with an initial amount of 8 billion pounds (8.7 US dollars). billion) allocated to green projects.
“Because conference, when I say I want to buy and make and sell more in Britain I mean it,” she will say, according to excerpts from her speech.
“This is a real plan for growth,” she will say, targeting the “growth plan” presented by Finance Minister Kwasi Quarting on Friday, when Labor accused him of prioritizing the rich over workers suffering from high prices by resorting to a discredited theory of a “downstream economy”.
A source close to the leadership said that this plan shifted the government to the right, as it gave the Labor Party an opportunity to prove that it can run the economy efficiently, as well as help low-income people and protect public services.
Kwarteng eliminated the country’s highest income tax rate and canceled a planned increase in corporate tax, all on top of an expensive scheme to subsidize energy bills for households and businesses, with few details on how to pay them in the short term afterwards. Increase in government debt.
In response, the pound fell more than 3% to its lowest level since 1985 against the US dollar on Friday, and fell against the euro and the Japanese yen as well, while government bonds posted their biggest daily sell-off in decades.
On Sunday, Starmer pledged to roll back the top income tax rate and bring it back to 45%, saying tax cuts for the wealthy would not spur growth.
Ed Miliband, Labour’s head of climate policy, said Labour’s plans would bring jobs back to Britain.
“This is about good jobs that pay well, with strong trade unions, and with money flowing back into the pockets of the British people.”
(dollar = 0.9211 pounds)
