ANGELA Rayner has defended her party’s decision not to renationalise the water, energy or rail industries if they win the next General Election.
Under Jeremy Corbyn the party proposed a programme of renationalisation which would include bringing rail-operating companies, energy networks, water companies and the Royal Mail back into public control.
However, since Keir Starmer’s election as party leader in 2020, Labour has said it no longer has plans to renationalise any of these industries despite the policy enjoying broad public support.
Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Tuesday, Rayner compared renationalisation to Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget.
“We’re not going to spend billions of pounds there [on renationalisation] when we can regulate,” she said.
She added that the party’s priority is making sure services “run effectively” rather than having an “ideologically driven” motive.
She said: “Just to say, when you get ideology driving policy, Liz Truss did that and crashed our economy, so we can’t do that.”
The deputy leader, who was also recently appointed Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary, also said her party would not be raising taxes for the wealthiest in society if they emerge as victors of the next election.
Asked whether the party was ruling out raising any tax across the board she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain, she said: “Rachel [Reeves] will set out come the general election our position but we know that we have the highest tax burden that we’ve had for a generation. We can’t just keep putting that burden onto people.
“What we have to do is raise living standards, we have to create secure employment and we’ve got to build more affordable homes to people can get on in life.”
Pressed on why Sir Keir Starmer had rowed back from a pledge he made when he became leader to increase income tax for the richest in society, she said: “Since that, we’ve had a Conservative economy that crashed the economy and the highest tax burden on people in a generation.”
