The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury says some of the language in leaked White House Signal messages is "very poor" and "more hostile than you would anticipate from a face-to-face conversation". His comments come after messages in a White House Signal group chat about European "free-loading" and plans for a military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen were inadvertently leaked. But Richard Fuller adds the comments on Europe were not designed for a British audience and should not have any impact on the relationship between the UK and the US. Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00The key issue is how businesses are feeling, the people that we rely on to make the decisions
00:04that can help grow the economy.
00:06And they're hurting.
00:07They're hurting from the decisions that Rachel Reeves made in her budget last October, particularly
00:12raising national insurance, which has meant the businesses planning for this year have
00:16said we probably can't make those additional investments that we want to do to grow our
00:20business.
00:21We're going to have to look at paying lower pay rises because of the tax, and we're probably
00:25going to have to hire fewer people.
00:26So that's where the real, where the rubber hits the road, really, with Rachel Reeves'
00:32budget.
00:33We'd have made different choices last October.
00:36We wouldn't have put forward the tax and spend and borrow policies that Ms. Reeves has.
00:41And that's because conservatives believe that if you want to achieve growth in the economy,
00:44the best way to do that is to tap into the talents of everyone in the country who wants
00:49to take a risk, start a business, or wants to grow a business.
00:53It's all of those people making those decisions that makes for an effective economy.
00:57And that's essentially the message that the governor of the Bank of England was reasserting
01:00yesterday as well.
01:01To me, it looks like the Chancellor is out of her depth, that she didn't anticipate what
01:07a damaging effect her decisions last October would have in confidence amongst British businesses
01:12and the impact that's going to have on near-term growth.
01:16And therefore, she's scrabbling to look at where cuts can be made.
01:19I don't get the impression that she's coming into this spring statement, emergency budget,
01:25whatever you want to call it, confident in knowing that this is what she plans to be
01:29at at this stage.
01:31And so therefore, she's having to backtrack, look for savings, and she's finding as she
01:35takes those back steps, she's walking into her own Labour Party, who thought they were
01:39being elected on a different programme than the one she's now being forced to present to them.