A shameless 'copy and paste': The Chancellor is trying to patch up her credibility with someone else’s record

4 June 2025, 18:21 | Updated: 5 June 2025, 09:50

By Gareth Bacon

The numbers may be dressed up in new colours, the slogans may be hastily reprinted, but the story Labour is trying to sell you today is one you’ve already heard before.

This is a Chancellor trying to patch up her credibility with someone else’s record. Reeves didn’t write much of this investment package. She’s stapled her name to it, hoping no one would notice. Same routes, same money, just a new driver.

We know the Chancellor has form in trying to pass off the work of others as her own - having lifted passages from her book on 'modern economics' from Wikipedia, but today she took her shameless copying and pasting to new levels.

Greater Manchester £2.5 billion, West Yorkshire £2.1 billion, Tees Valley £1 billion. All figures first laid out by Conservatives back in October 2023, as part of our £36 billion Network North reallocation. The most ambitious investment programme in regional transport for a generation.

And just this morning, one of Reeves’ own Treasury Ministers, Torsten Bell, couldn’t hold the line. Dragged before the DWP Select Committee, he admitted what we already knew: “Lots of them were announced by the previous government.” Labour’s great unveiling exposed as nothing more than a rebranding exercise.

But the problem isn’t that Labour copied us but rather is what they’re doing next. Because behind the copy-paste chaos lies a transport policy that punishes drivers, empowers union barons, and centralises control into Whitehall’s grip.

Time and time again Labour have promised the world but consistently betrayed those they made promises to.

The Government’s chaos is having a disastrous impact on the economy because, just like every Labour government, this Labour government is the party of high spend, high borrowing and high tax. We Conservatives have led the way exposing Labour’s failing economic strategy. On Labour’s watch, inflation is above target, unemployment is up, growth is stagnating, thousands of jobs are being destroyed, businesses are closing, and major retailers are warning of price hikes as businesses struggle to absorb the weight of Labour’s tax hikes and regulations.

Whilst specifically on transport, they’ve abandoned road upgrades, slapped a £1.7 billion tax raid on motorists, fast-tracked Ed Miliband’s petrol car ban, and let union leaders call the shots on our railways. On top of this they’ve cancelled key road links, scrapped the Restoring Your Railway Fund, abandoning dozens of vital projects, axed the £2 bus fare cap, and punished the very communities that depend most on affordable, reliable transport. Their postcode lottery leaves towns behind so they can flash headlines in cities.

Labour have only been in power for 11 months. It feels far longer. Time and again the Labour government has let the British people down.

In government, Conservatives protected buses, capped fares, and kept fuel taxes down for British drivers. We invested over £100 billion to modernise our railways - delivering Crossrail, upgrading main lines, electrifying tracks, and introducing minimum service levels to stop industrial blackmail.

We backed rural roads and launched Network North. Labour mocked the reallocation of HS2 funds, sneering at the sums. So, if it was wrong then, why is it right now?

And we would go further, backing private innovation, embracing competition, and harnessing British entrepreneurship.

Unlike Labour, the Conservative Party is building for the long term. Under new leadership, we’re developing a serious, strategic transport plan grounded in enterprise, powered by evidence, and shaped by those who know how to deliver.

We’re convening voices that move the economy to shape a new model for growth, designed to last. Working with the planners, builders, thinkers, entrepreneurs we will design the next generation of policy.

Rachel Reeves needed to do better than copying and pasting announcements made by the previous Conservative Government. She is scrambling to hold together an economic strategy that is collapsing around her and needs to start showing some leadership. But today, she has shown the limits of her imagination.

Britain deserves a government with the courage to think independently, and only the Conservatives are doing that.

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Gareth Bacon MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Transport

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