Chuka Umunna: It’s “absurd” to watch the Tories pose as critics of the establishment

A leading Labour backbencher has described as “ridiculous” the claim by some colleagues that the party had fought the last election on a “neo-liberal economic consensus” as he launched an attack on Theresa May’s “absurd” attempt to post as anti-establishment.

Chuka Umunna mounted a defence of Ed Miliband’s attempt to reform capitalism and poured scorn on the idea that politicians who rushed to critique globalisation in the aftermath of the votes for Donald Trump and Brexit are “telling us something knew”.

Umunna, who was shadow business secretary until 2015, said he and the former leader had tried to set out measures which would tackle the downsides of globalisation which the Tories had attacked – before performing a swift u-turn on their argument in the aftermath of the vote to leave the EU.

“Interestingly, the same people who now blame a ‘liberal elite’ for all the downsides of this globalisation were the very same people who were its biggest champions – they are the same people who attacked Ed for his so called predator/producer 2011 Labour Party conference speech where he started to identify these problems and argued for radical change, they are the same people who lambasted us for being anti business for daring to suggest a modicum of reform.  

“In fact, the biggest absurdity over the past few days has been watching these same politicians and commentators (I include the prime minister in this) who have been members of the political and media elite since I was at school – penning articles and giving speeches – finger pointing at an ‘establishment’ they have been part of for as long as I can remember.  To borrow Mark Carney’s words, what we are witnessing is ‘a massive blame deflection exercise.'”

Umunna, who is now a member of the home affairs select committee, also highlighted the fact that the Labour leadership has now adopted many of the policies which were included in the last manifesto despite the party’s change of approach.

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell rose to the top of the party on a rejection of the economic analysis put forward by Miliband, Umunana and Ed Balls but have since gone on to outline several policies which echo those set out by Labour between 2010 and 2015.

“Equally absurd are the claims by those people in my party who wrongly claimed that Labour going into the last General Election was in hock to some neo liberal, economic consensus – looking back, it is even more ridiculous given they now parrot so many of the policies we advanced in the May 2015 manifesto,” Umunna said yesterday.

“A national industrial strategy, a national investment bank, regional banks, the promotion of different models of ownership, increasing investment in R&D and innovation – which John McDonnell announced at our conference this year are re-announcements of existing policy which we had unveiled at previous party conferences. By the way, our fiscal rules already allowed for greater borrowing for investment purposes.”