Backing Business to Create Economic Growth

Debate between Max Wilkinson and Robert Jenrick

Monday 18th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Reform)]

Well, what a complete shambles! Less than two years ago, this Government were elected with the largest majority of any Government, bar one, in 100 years. People across our country, including most in my home county of Nottinghamshire, put their trust in the Labour party. Why? Because it promised change. It said it would do things differently, it would be better and it would end the chaos. It would put country before party. And where are we, less than two years later?

[Max Wilkinson]

You’re in a different party.

[Robert Jenrick]

We are here—[Laughter.] The hon. Member asks why I changed party. I will tell him why I changed party. It is because millions of people across the country look upon the performance of the last Government, and this one, and say that these are wasted years and that our country needs real change, yet we see nothing for it.

This Government, let us be honest with ourselves, lie in ashes. They have failed. An air of unreality hangs over this debate. Members queue up to speak as if this were a normal King’s Speech. The Prime Minister summoned the King, the Crown, the golden carriages and the fanfares of the trumpets. For what? To paper over the cracks of his failing Government. This, as we all know, is a lame-duck Government presided over by a lame-duck Prime Minister. Where is the Prime Minister? He is in his bunker. Where are most of the Cabinet? They are plotting. I am surprised that so many Members are here—perhaps they are filling in time before the change of Government.

These have been wasted years. That is what Winston Churchill said of the 1930s when he described them as

“years that the locust hath eaten”—

totally wasted time. At a moment when, in our hearts, each and every one of us knows that this country faces the most profound challenges at least since the 1970s, and perhaps more so, we have stagnating economic growth and the rapid deindustrialisation of our country. We have demographics that pose immense challenges, public finances that are on the rocks and getting worse with every passing day, and out of control illegal migration. We have social cohesion challenges of a type that we have never known as a country. Our streets feel increasingly lawless and our town centres are hollowed out.

Those problems cannot all be placed at the door of this Labour Government. They are a result of 25 years of failed politics in this country by the two main political parties and all those who have gone along with them. Yes, I hold myself partly responsible for that, and that is why I chose to walk away from the party and do something new. But today things are getting worse on every one of those measures: 70,000 people have crossed on small boats.