Stop wasting our money, Johnson told

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson must stop squandering taxpayers’ money and start spending it on projects to improve citizens’ quality of life, the opposition Labour Party said, promising a rival vision for post-coronavirus Britain.

Finance Minister Rishi Sunak will on Wednesday announce tens of billions of pounds of infrastructure investment and set spending budgets for the next year – focusing on how to ‘level up’ opportunity in poorer regions outside London.

Ahead of that, Labour’s would-be finance minister Anneliese Dodds accused Sunak and Johnson of wasting public money during the coronavirus pandemic and a long-term failure to fix imbalances during the Conservative Party’s 10 years in power.

“After a decade of letting Britain down, people don’t want to hear more empty rhetoric and last-minute decisionmaking from this government,” Dodds said in a statement ahead of her appearance at a Reuters Newsmaker event today.

Johnson won a huge election victory last year built on twin promises to take Britain out of the European Union, which he did in January, and to spread the wealth and prosperity concentrated around London to all four corners of the United Kingdom.

But the Covid-19 crisis has blown a £200b ($265.6bn) hole in Johnson’s regeneration plans.

Critics of his government’s response say it has made regional divisions even worse and disproportionately impacted those living on lower incomes.

Labour, under new leadership since Keir Starmer took over from left-wing veteran Jeremy Corbyn in April, are looking to capitalise on public dissatisfaction with Johnson’s handling of the crisis and capture voters’ trust on the economy.

Pedestrians wearing protective face covering to combat the spread of the coronavirus, look at a phone in Covent Garden in central London, yesterday.