The interview with Jack today..........

Straw says UK can 'weather storm'

Justice secretary defends Labour's "experienced pilot and co-pilot"
Justice Secretary Jack Straw has said Labour is best placed to see Britain through the current economic downturn.

He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show that economic management under Labour would help the UK to "weather these storms".

He said Chancellor Alistair Darling did not speak out of turn saying economic conditions were the worst for 60 years.

The Tories have said it shows a split between him and Gordon Brown. Mr Straw also ruled out any Labour leadership challenge to the prime minister.

Experience

Mr Straw likened Britain's current economic situation to an airliner passing through turbulence.

There won't be a leadership challenge from me or from anybody else

Jack Straw, Justice Secretary
"The question for the country is who is better to take us through this turbulent period?" he said.

"Is it an experienced pilot and co-pilot in Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, who have had the experience… or is it two people in David Cameron and George Osborne, who have had no experience of flying a large plane whatsoever."

The Tories have claimed Alastair Darling's comments to the Guardian newspaper "let the cat out of the bag" about the economy and proved that government was divided at the top level.

But Mr Straw insisted the Cabinet was completely in step and stressed that Mr Darling had been referring to the worldwide impact of the credit crunch and soaring food prices, rather than Britain's situation specifically.

This coming 12 months will be the most difficult 12 months the Labour party has had in a generation, quite frankly

Alistair Darling


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He said: "We talk to each other all the time, each of us talks for the other. I'm sorry about this, but we're not clones of each other, and we sometimes use different adverbs and adjectives.

"The message from Gordon, from Alistair, from colleagues like myself, has been the same: we've had a very good period of economic management and economic success which has, for sure, provided us with a really serious platform to weather these storms."

Asked if he could rule himself out of any leadership challenge, Mr Straw said: "Yes. There won't be a leadership challenge from me or from anybody else."

Housing market

Mr Straw refused to speculate on possible measures to bolster the ailing housing market. But he said the government had already announced plans to allow local authorities to buy unsold homes to let to tenants.

"This is actually really important. Because of the credit crunch, because of the difficulty people find in getting mortgages, there is a market in the private sector that is, to say the least, not as buoyant as it was.

"Local authorities have said to us… why can't we go into the market to buy some of these houses. We have listened and we have acted very quickly."