Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has revealed he is preparing a Labour budget, as he predicted the party would win a “reasonable majority” if there was a snap general election.
While Labour have been trailing the Conservatives in the polls, Mr McDonnell said: “We need another two to three points to take us into government and that is what we will get when we go into that campaign.”
With Theresa May’s Tories no longer having a Commons majority, the shadow chancellor said that Parliament “is so unstable it is completely unpredictable”.
And he told a fringe event at the Scottish Labour conference in Dundee that he and Jeremy Corbyn were already preparing for government.
While he accepted it was “almost impossible” for Labour to force a general election under the current system of fixed term parliaments, Mr McDonnell said: “Just in case there is an election we are preparing for an election, we’ve got all the campaign plans ready. We’ve been testing messaging, we’ve got the grid ready to go.
“The grid is who goes where in terms of shadow cabinet all round the country, where Jeremy’s rallies are going to be, so if there is a general election we go straight into election mode.”
Mr McDonnell also told Labour activists that as part of the preparations he was now considering his first budget.
He said: “I’m going through a first budget exercise, so I’m sitting down with all the shadow cabinet teams to talk about their plans, costing them and then look at priorities.
“We’re in that situation where literally we’re preparing for government, we’re preparing for the election.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel