There are better days ahead – PM
THERESA MAY has declared the age of austerity over – with a message to voters that “there are better days ahead”.
In her keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Mrs May said next year’s post-Brexit Spending Review will set out a programme of increased investment in public services, as a mark that the decade of cuts following the financial crash is coming to an end.
And she announced a new cancer strategy to increase early detection of the illness and save 55,000 lives a year by 2028, as well as a ninth successive annual freeze in fuel duty.
The Prime Minister said she was lifting the cap on councils borrowing to fund new housing, in a move which aides said could lead to additional investment of an estimated £1 billion in as many as 10,000 new homes a year.
In a message to voters weary from years of belt-tightening, the PM said: “Because you made sacrifices, there are better days ahead. A decade after the financial crash, people need to know that the austerity it led to is over and that their hard work has paid off.” Shadow chancellor John McDonnell dismissed Mrs May’s austerity claim as “a complete con”, saying; “The Government has already told us that spending for the next four years will be hit by many more vicious cuts. Nothing, sadly, has changed.”
In a speech designed to rally her party behind her following a conference riven by differences over Brexit, Mrs May warned that squabbling over the details of EU withdrawal might mean “ending up with no Brexit at all”.
Standing firmly by her Brexit plan, denounced by Boris Johnson as a “constitutional outrage”, Mrs May promised: “If we stick together and hold our nerve, I know we can get a deal that delivers for Britain.”
She did not use the word “Chequers” – the name of her country residence where the plan was agreed by Cabinet in July – but aides insisted that this was not intended to signal any shift away from her blueprint.
There was also no mention of the former foreign secretary, who won thunderous applause from 1,500 activists on Tuesday as he called on her to “chuck” the Brexit plan agreed at her country residence in July.
Less than an hour before taking the stage in Birmingham, Mrs May was hit by a call from former minister James Duddridge, for her removal. He said she was “incapable” of providing the leadership Tories need.
But she did her best to appear carefree as she sashayed on to the stage to Abba hit “Dancing Queen” and joked about the coughing fit and collapsing stage backdrop which marred her calamitous conference speech in Manchester last year.
The reprise of the dance steps from her recent African trip surprised not only Tory delegates and TV viewers – but even her closest aides and husband Philip, as Mrs May had kept her plans secret.
In an upbeat message, she declared: “If we come together, there is no limit to what we can achieve. Our future is in our hands.”