"I can't pretend that we could turn the taps on, pretend the damage hasn't been done to the economyit has," he said. "There's no magic money tree that we can waggle the day after the election. No, they have broken the economy, they've done huge damage."
Starmer was speaking from a podium in Dudley in the West Midlands, where Boris Johnson previously launched the Conservatives' levelling up pledge in 2020, a policy the Labour leader said had "unforgivably" failed.
"In saying levelling up, the government was tapping into something real that people yearn for.
But they didn't have a viable plan, and they didn't do the hard yards.
That's unforgivable," he said.
The choice of location was seen as a direct challenge to Andy Street, the West Midlands mayor, who will be fighting Labour's Richard Parker for his third term as mayor in the region.
In his opening speech at the event, Parker accused Street of "working hard to pretend he's not a Tory", as he pledged to build more council homes and create 150,000 jobs in the region.
この記事は The Guardian の March 29, 2024 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は The Guardian の March 29, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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