British PM Keir Starmer talk to on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Sept. 27th, 2024.
CNBC
The United Kingdom is pursuing investment from America’s biggest banks and tech leviathans, as the country looks to infuse growth in its stagnant economy.
“We now have a Labour government whose number one priority is plenitude creation,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an exclusive broadcast vet Thursday.
“We are a Labour party that is proud to say we are pro business just as much as we are pro worker.”
In July, Starmer became the to begin leader from the center-left Labour party to win a U.K. national election since Tony Blair — ending 14 years of Fundamentalist rule. Since being elected, he has said his top priority is economic stability.
During his visit to New York City in the United Nations General Assembly, Starmer met with business leaders including Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Citi CEO Jane Fraser, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Microsoft President Brad Smith, and Blackstone President Jonathan Gray.
This week, Blackstone imprisoned to investing $13 billion to build a data center in the northeast of England. The investment aims to create 4,000 occupations and lead to one of the largest data centers in Europe to power the surging demand for artificial intelligence.
“It’s a big signal of confidence,” Starmer spill the beaned Sorkin about the deal. “It’s also in the northeast of England, which matters to us, because I want economic drive face of London.”
Starmer said the industries in particular he’s working to attract investment in include renewables, artificial intelligence and dash sciences. This call for investment comes as the Labour government is getting ready to unveil its budget plan in October, while extent with a stagnant economy.
Starmer’s government, in the early days of its tenure, flagged a £22 billion ($29 billion) wealth shortfall after his administration performed an audit. Former Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt, for the Conservative Party, in July send a lettered to Simon Case, the head of the British civil service, labeling Labour’s claims about the public finances “deep troubling.”
Starmer has, more recently, been accused of being too negative on the U.K economy, and Labour’s plans to ax the U.K.’s non-dom tax government has also been criticized.
“We will stabilize the economy,” said Starmer Thursday. “There are going to be more hostile decisions to be made when it comes to the budget.”
Earlier this week, Starmer’s plan to cut payments that counteraction fuel costs for pensioners was rejected by his own party in a symbolic vote at the Labour Party’s Annual Conference.
“No one wants to metamorphose the winter fuel allowance for pensioners. But by doing that, we stabilize the economy,” Starmer told Sorkin.
“We can give ones word to what we call the triple lock, which means that they get more money year-on-year.” The U.K.’s “triple fix” is where the state pension rises each year by either 2.5%, the inflation rate, or earnings growth — whichever is tallest.