Delivering a speech in Barnsley after a day of turmoil in Westminster, Sir Keir said the damage caused by last month’s mini-budget was “unprecedented” as he repeated calls for a general election. He pointed to the “grotesque mess of a Tory prime minister handing out sacking notices to her own chancellor”. Politics Live: New chancellor warns of ‘tough decisions’ on taxation “This lot,” said Sir Keir. “They didn’t just hit the British economy – they also prevailed. “They got stuck as they made the pound sink, we got stuck as they drove our pensions to the brink of collapse. “I was stuck as they pushed the British people’s mortgages and bills through the roof. “They did all that. All the pain our country is facing now is because of them – and there’s still one person left: the prime minister.” Sir Keir added that, deep down, Liz Truss knows she can’t go on, while her MPs should know they “don’t have a mandate to make unfunded promises”. “Whatever they say next, whatever they do, boils down to one argument for them. It’s party first, country second and that’s inexcusable.” Image: Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer says Liz Truss is ‘stuck’ in power and ‘cannot fix the mess she has created’. Sir Keir repeated his calls for a general election, saying after four defeats “the prospect of serving our country no longer seems impossible”. But he warned that if Labor takes power, the damage done to the British economy by the Conservatives will make things “really difficult”. “We cannot take irresponsible risks with the country’s finances, we must be the party of sound money,” Sir Keir said. He said that while Britain has faced financial crises in the past, “there are no historical precedents for what (the Conservatives) have done to our economy”. Referring to former party leader Neil Kinnock’s famous speech in 1985, he said: “You can’t play politics with people’s jobs, people’s services or their homes.” The speech came after new chancellor Jeremy Hunt signaled his plan to overturn the prime minister’s entire economic strategy, in a stunning rebuke of the commitments that brought her to power. Mr Hunt told Sky News there were “mistakes” in the mini-budget and warned of tough times ahead. “We won’t have the speed of tax cuts that we expected and some taxes will go up,” he said. Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 9:58 New Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said there Read more: Make no doubt, the PM is in deep trouble Can Liz Truss meet her new chancellor Jeremy Hunt? He also said that all government departments would have to “find more efficiencies than they planned to find”. Hunt was appointed chancellor on Friday, an hour after his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked after just 38 days in office. While some Tory MPs welcomed his appointment as “an experienced pair of hands”, others questioned why Mr Kwarteng was the one to go when he was pursuing the policies Ms Truss championed in her leadership campaign. Some MPs have discussed replacing the Prime Minister with Rishi Sunak or Penny Mordaunt after she reversed a key policy to scrap the planned rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25%, WhatsApp messages seen by Sky News reveal. Mr Kwarteng’s downfall began with the mini-budget on September 23, in which he announced £45 billion in unfunded tax cuts. The mini-budget pushed the pound to a record low against the dollar, raised the cost of government borrowing and mortgage rates and prompted an unprecedented intervention by the Bank of England.
