Jeremy Hunt scolded Sky News’s new Sunday morning politics presenter Trevor Phillips for not believing in Britain as the two dramatically clashed.
The Chancellor was taking questions on steel production in the UK from Phillips, who has just officially taken over from Sophy Ridge and was looking to push the channel’s negative view of Brexit Britain.
Phillips asked: “When the Prime Minister talked about Brexit freedoms, did he talk about the freedom to rop up an industry that can’t compete with China and to hand over half a billion quid to a global conglomerate Tata?”
But The Chancellor, who had earlier pointed out that the UK has outperformed most of the G7 including Germany, France and Italy in coming out of the covid pandemic, hit back.
He said: “I’m sorry Trevor, I think you are being very negative and declinist abourt Britain.”
He went on: “We can certainly compete with China.
“We are the world’s second largest offshore wind producer and when it comes to high end manufacturing as opposed to the low cost manufacturing we have four of the world’s top ten universities.
“Amazing research and development happening here.”
The Chancellor was doing the Sunday morning political show round ahead of Parliament returning this week.
On Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC morning show he resisted promsing new tax cuts but also did not rule them out.
He told her: “As a Conservative there is nothing I would like more than to reduce taxes.”
However, he said the biggest way to help members of the public was to bring down inflation and this morning he claimed that he is on course to halve inflation by the end of the year.
Mr Hunt also defended spending on new school buildings arguing that the Prime Minister Rishi sunak as Chancellor had “increased capital spending by £40 billion” when he was Chancellor.
He added: “I protected that.”
It comes amid questions over schools being closed at the start of the new acvademic year because of crumbling concrete.
