politics expert Dr Steve McCabe explains why Labour would argue that the upcoming ‘tough budget’ may be necessary to get the country back on track.
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00:00You know, you go down any high street and of course you sort of see lots of closed shops.
00:06That's a consequence of the fact that people are obviously buying online and of course
00:10the thing is though, the goods are not produced in this country largely, so we buy, yeah,
00:16certainly my parents and of course their parents, my grandparents, you know, this country or
00:21the country they would have lived in was much more sort of orientated towards manufacturing
00:25and coming back to the whole aspect of the service sector, it tends to be paying people
00:30a lot less money and there's a lot less assuredness about contracts than a couple of generations
00:37ago.
00:38Since being elected earlier this year, Labour has faced growing unpopularity due to a slow
00:43economic recovery and dissatisfaction with their handling of the cost of living crisis.
00:49Critics, such as many in the Conservative Party, argue Keir Starmer's leadership lacks
00:55bold policy direction, alienating both traditional and progressive voters, while internal divisions
01:02further weaken the party's image.
01:04So there's a whole set of circumstances, but of course, you know, the current government,
01:09they inherited, dare I say, a bit of a mess from the previous administration and I can
01:13put that down to a number of things.
01:16If I may sort of say, Brexit, you know, of course we're sort of, we're poorer as a consequence
01:19of that.
01:20Then of course we had the pandemic, now of course that was sort of a once in a lifetime
01:24event where the economy closed down.
01:26There is this difficulty, people want better services, but when it comes to sort of the
01:31fact that we're going to have to pay more money, they don't like it and of course that
01:34was the sort of difficulty.
01:35I think there was a sort of, if you like, a conspiracy of silence on the sort of the
01:40fact that the budget, or the financial considerations looking forward, were pretty dire and dare
01:47I say it, Labour are trying to sort of remedy that, but of course, as we know, we're getting
01:51howls of derision from every interest group that feel they're going to be affected by
01:55what may or may not be announced next week.