Replacement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. He is absolutely right to stress the importance of stability, and I think that will be helped by the Chancellor being able to make his statement.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Leader of the House suggests that we should be grateful for the fact that the Prime Minister has made a difficult decision. I presume that she means “grateful for the fact that the Prime Minister has stuck to it,” given the number of U-turns that we have seen over the last couple of days, but that is what the job is—making difficult decisions. There are difficult decisions to be made about what is happening in Ukraine, about the fact that President Putin has nuclear weapons, about the chaos caused by Brexit, about gang crime, about the climate crisis, and about Ebola in Africa; and all that we know right now—unless the Leader of the House tells us otherwise—is that the Prime Minister is cowering under her desk and asking for it all to go away. Is it not about time she did that, and let someone else who can make decisions in the British national interest take charge instead?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The Prime Minister is not under a desk, as the hon. Lady suggests. I can assure the House that, with regret, she is not here for a very good reason. Neither has she taken this decision to win the hon. Lady’s gratitude; she has done it out of a sense of duty, because she knows what is in the national interest.