The Latest Breaking News from Mel Stride

COMMENT: Delivering her spending review, the chancellor even made her theatrical opposite number look convincing – she needs to rediscover her firebrand energy and win Labour MPs back onside, says John Rentoul

Chancellor announces £39bn boost for social housing, £29bn for NHS and £11bn for defence – and promises to close all asylum hotels as she takes a swipe at Farage and dismisses Tory warnings of a ‘cruel summer’ of tax rises

The Chancellor said the Treasury had ‘already drawn a line under the Tory mismanagement with tax rises last year’.

NEWS ANALYSIS: Party insiders want to lean into the Tory leader’s forthright personality, and ‘let Kemi be Kemi’ as they try to tackle the rise of Nigel Farage and Reform. Kate Devlin and David Maddox report

The Tory leader suggested such a move would be ‘neither here nor there’ for voters’ perception of the party.

NEWS ANALYSIS: When the best thing the most senior member of a party leader’s team can say about them is that ‘she will get better through time’, then the Tories know they have a serious problem, writes David Maddox

Former PM accuses Mel Stride of being ‘creature of system’ after his formal repudiation of 2022 unfunded tax cuts

It’s a mistake to think that, when it comes to the UK economy, the Conservatives have always been seen by British voters as a safer pair of hands than Labour. But, notwithstanding the damaging austerity imposed on the country by David Cameron’s chancellor, George Osborne, it was, by and large,…

For some reason, Stride used his first keynote speech as shadow chancellor to discuss the abject failure of his party

The shadow chancellor insisted the party has the right person in the top job.

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