Shadow home secretary says Britons need to ‘up their game’ if country is to compete with China, India and South Korea

There is a history of Conservative politcians telling the public to buck up and work harder. When mass unemployment struck in the 1980s, Norman Tebbit advised people to follow the example of his father, who responded to the 1930s depression by getting on his bike and looking for work. During the early years of the coalition, five ambitious backbenchers co-authored a book saying British workers were “among the worst idlers in the world”. All of the authors later became ministers, three achieved ‘great office of state’ level (Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel and Dominic Raab) and one became prime minister (Liz Truss).

Now another Tory has trode down this path. In an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson for his Political Thinking podcast, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said.

I do a bit. There are nine million working age adults who are not working. And as we compete globally with countries like, you know, South Korea, China, India, you know, we need a work ethic. We need everybody to be making a contribution. … we need to lift our game and to up our game.

Chris Philp was the architect of the Liz Truss budget which crashed the economy and sent family mortgages rocketing.

After the Conservatives’ economic failure left working people worse off, it takes some real brass neck for the Tory top team to tell the public that it’s really all their fault.

I was making the case that tax cuts…need to be accompanied by spending control or spending reductions … in order to show that the books are being balanced and to avoid the market reaction that we saw …

I made that case internally … but it wasn’t unfortunately listened to. I think had my suggestions been listened to a bit earlier, then there was a there’s a much higher chance that [the mini-budget] would have worked. And it’ll be always a matter of regret that those points weren’t taken on board.

Five years ago today, Boris Johnson and the Conservative party delivered on the results of the Brexit referendum and secured our departure from the European Union – delivering on the clear democratic will of the country.

Since then, our country – standing on its own two feet as a sovereign nation – has been able to achieve so much.