Tories will never again put economy at risk like Liz Truss did, Mel Stride says

Mel Stride said that while the Tories moved swiftly to limit the damage caused by Liz Truss, above, ‘the damage to our credibility is not so easily undone’. Photograph: José Luis Magaña/AP

The Conservatives will never again put the economy at risk with unfunded tax cuts like those in Liz Truss’s mini-budget, the shadow chancellor has said, in the party’s clearest repudiation yet of the former prime minister.

In a speech on the economy, Mel Stride went beyond any comments made by the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, to accept that Truss’s September 2022 fiscal plans, which involved about £45bn in unfunded tax cuts and quickly unravelled, badly dented the party’s reputation.