In My View: Florence Eshalomi, MP for Vauxhall

Last month, Conservative Party members and MPs chose Liz Truss to be their fourth Prime Minister during their 12 years in power.

Almost immediately, the half-baked plans of the Conservatives’ new choice of leader has plunged the country into a crisis made in Downing Street.

In her first PMQs, the new Prime Minister made it clear that she would not apply a windfall tax to the oil and gas companies making huge excess profits, meaning future generations will pay more and more for spiralling energy costs for decades.

But this turned out to be just a taster for things to come.

During the first budget under the new leadership, the Chancellor announced a return to trickle-down economics; announcing an unfunded tax cut for the richest at a time when working people in Vauxhall are suffering under a crippling cost of living crisis.

This was met with incredulity, not just by people up and down the country, but also by panicking markets.

Over the coming days, the value of the pound plummeted, the cost of borrowing skyrocketed and the Bank of England had to take emergency action to protect pension funds.

The result of Liz Truss’ first month in office will be felt by households for years, with working people paying higher prices in shops and mortgage payers paying a Tory Government premium.

Worryingly, the Conservative solution to this crisis is a return to austerity, with more cuts to our already fractured society.

In the past week, we have heard all too familiar lines around the need for ‘efficiency savings’ and real terms cuts to schemes such as Universal Credit.

The reality is that many of these ‘efficiency savings’ are anything but efficient, and further cuts to public services already on the brink will simply exasperate the problems faced by people in Vauxhall.

Take cuts to youth services, which saw a 70 per cent real terms decline between 2010/11 and 2018/19.

As the co-chairwoman of the APPG on Child Criminal Exploitation and Knife Crime, I’ve seen how vital these services are in preventing the exploitation of children and getting children on the right track.

Cutting these services can never be efficient when it leads to serious violence on our streets, a tragic number of young people ending up in A&E with wounds and more and more people with severe trauma.

The problems in this country have not just been caused by the last few weeks of disastrous governance, but instead find their roots in 12 years of Conservative mismanagement.

Restoring our public services and solving the issues of backlog Britain will not come with cuts, it will come with a Labour Government who will run the country responsibly and with long-term vision.