Now, time to get Labour's response to all of the day's news. As you can see, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury joins me now. He's here to talk about why he and the Shadow Chancellor believe the Conservatives are gaslighting Brits about the state of the economy. Very good morning to you. Thanks for joining us. The reason you're talking about this is because Rachel Reeves is going to be giving a speech today. Talk us through the headline of that.

Well, look, we're baking the case that having spoken to people across the country in the run up to the local Ameral elections last week, we know that people's lived experience of the economy is the most important test for the next general election. We will fight that general election on the economy and pose the question, do people feel better off or worse off after 14 years of chaos from the Conservatives in government, or would they like to return to stability under labor? And that's what Rachel will be setting out in the speech today.

I'm interested in the timing of the speech and reading some of the lines that have been trailed. It's almost trying to get ahead of events potentially the week. There's a lot of data to come. There's a Bank of England meeting. Does that suggest that at least in the short term, you do think the data will be a little bit better?

So we expect the data to be better. We want it to be better because it's been so awful, but that bar is quite low. We'd like to come out of recession. That's the least we can expect. We want to stimulate more growth under a labor government, not just bump along the bottom or be in recession as we have been under the Conservatives. But we also want inflation to get back to target at 2%. Our broader argument, though, is that until people at home feel the benefit of feel better off, it doesn't actually matter where the line on a graph goes or what the latest quarterly statistic is. People need to feel that, and we don't think they will feel that under five more years of the Conservatives in government.

One line I was particularly drawn to of the speech that's going to be given later. If she says it as has been trailed. Rachel, we expect to say, by the time of the next election, we can and should expect interest rates to be cut. So does Labor think the Bank of England should cut this week?

Well, nice question, but you know the Bank of England is independent. We support the independence to the Bank of England. It's for them to decide that. But our view is that if the election does happen later in this calendar year, that we would assume that the Bank of England might be in a position based on the broader economic data to cut interest rates. If they decide to do that, we welcome it because that will make borrowing cheaper for people refinancing their mortgages, for example. But the fact is that over the last 14 years, the damage has already done for many people at home. If you've locked into a new mortgage now for two or more years off the back of the explosion Liz Truss's mini budget, people are still going to feel the pain of that. That's a consequence of the chaos of Conservatives in government, which you won't have with a Labor government.

I want to talk about our story, Sam Coates' story earlier, that the MoD has faced a hack, according to his reports by China, the state of China, behind it. How would Labor deal with China?

Well, in terms of the cyber attack, obviously, the defense secretary is giving a statement to the House of Commons later today, and we all need to see the detail of that before being able to comment more broadly. The issue here, I think, is one, a foreign policy, and also second, of basically technology and IT. We do need the government to make sure that all of its IT systems are more secure because whether it's countries or bad actors trying to attack UK systems, this is not new information, and we can't be in this position again.

I agree that needs to be more detail. We'll get that later on. But step back even from the last 24 hours and this story, does labor see China as a friend, an adversary, Corsary, worse than that, an enemy?

Sure. The relationship is complex, and there's a number of different areas where, for example, we have to work together on. Climate change and saving the planet is one of those. So we need to cooperate where we can. But we also need to challenge China where there's clear evidence of a need for challenge, whether that's about its actions within its own borders or its aggression with other countries. If the evidence is clear today, for example, about it trying to hack UK Ministry of Defense systems, clearly we would call that out. The relationship will be changing over time. But of course, in opposition, you don't have access to all of the intelligence. We need to look at that in the round if we're in the election later this year.

Let's talk about the latest situation in the Middle East. Clearly significant attacks on Rafa overnight, whether or not it's a full-scale ground invasion to be decided. Does Israel risk going too far with these steps, enough that the UK should be challenging Israel more or even withdrawing its support for Israel?

We and the Labor Party have said for some time now that a ground offensive into Rafa is not something that we would support. Clearly, given the humanitarian crisis that civilians are facing in that region and the fact that they're locked in because of the borders means that the consequences of that for people there who are already in a tragic situation would be even worse. Overnight, you've been reporting in others that there may be some ceasefire agreement. We hope that's the case. That's where we want to get to, not least because that means that aid will be able to be making its to those people that need it, and that we hope that Israel and Hamas and others will be able to get back around the table to start a political dialog.

How close is labor, though, to deciding to change its position? If, for example, the fighting in Rafe escalate significantly, would that be sufficient?

Labour's position today is that we want there to be a ceasefire. We want Israeli hostages to be released, aid to be made available to those that need it, and a return to a political dialog to secure a two-state sustainable solution. Our policy will no doubt change over time in respect of events, but actually the core tenets of that, returning to that two-state solution in a political dialog, not a military field, I think will be pretty secure.

I guess a lot of the former Labor supporters that would disagree with that position, they'd say those four points you just listed aren't being met. And yet at the headline, there's still a support there, tacit or otherwise for Israel from your party in Sakeer Starmer. Stepping back from it all, do you think it had more of an effect at the polls? If you There's lots of conclusions to take from the local elections, but was there a more pro-Palestinian anti-Labour vote that materialized than you'd expected?

There are two things. One, what's our policy in the Middle East that has to be determined by events and the real diplomatic situation we face working with our allies to try to influence Israel and Hamas to get to a position of peace? That won't be influenced by dynamics around trying to get more or less people to vote for us because that's foreign policy. It has to stay pretty solid. In terms of our elections last week, we We've made significant progress across the country, which we were very happy with. You're right, there were some areas and some communities where independent candidates took votes from Labor. We obviously don't want that to be the case. We want people to be voting Labor in every part of the country. But as Kirstalmer said, at West Midland's victory lap on Friday night, we recognize that and we want to spend time talking and listening to those communities to try to persuade them that if they want change in this country, the only way they can do that is by voting Labor at the general election.

It's interesting talking about when the general election might be, and I guess the rhetoric always from your party has been, Call a general election, call it now. On one level, secretly, you're not that bothered about when it's going to happen as the results keep coming in and showing that you've got plenty of support. Does it almost waiting longer is helping you?

We think the country needs to change, and that requires the general election for us to be able to do that. That's why we want the general election to come as quickly as possible in the hope that we will win and form that majority labor government that we're working towards so that we can bring an end to this years of chaos from the Conservatives.

Darren Jones, thanks for joining us this morning. Good to.