Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride has been grilled on his "ironic" pledge to "rewire" Britain's economy, as GB News host Ben Leo claimed the minister missed a "golden opportunity".

Ahead of a speech today on the Conservative economic plan, Stride told GB News that "productivity and growth have been too slow".

In his address today, Stride will acknowledge Liz Truss's catastrophic premiership and vow to "never again" make spending pledges the Government cannot afford.

Hitting back at Stride, Truss has branded the Shadow Chancellor a "creature of the system", accusing him of "kowtowing to the failed Treasury Orthodoxy".

Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride was grilled by GB News host Ben Leo on his economic pledges

Pressed by host Ellie Costello on his plan, Stride explained: "For too long, probably since the global financial crisis in 2008, the economy has not performed in a way that has been appropriate for the needs of both the people of our country and the challenges that we face.

"Productivity and growth have been too slow, and if we're to tackle that, we need to have a deep, long think about everything from our tax system, the size of the state, our skills mix as we bring net migration down, how our higher education is working, how our universities are working and whether they're delivering."

Interjecting Stride, host Ben Leo highlighted that "since 2008, the party who was in power for that time was your party", questioning him on how Britons can "trust the Conservatives" with the economy.

Ben stated: "How do you expect people to trust the Conservatives? You're talking about a rewire of the economic model, you had a chance, and indeed the nation had a chance to have that very thing under Liz Truss.

Mel Stride is setting out his economic plans in a speech today

"She says she was stitched up by the OBR or the Bank of England, but you had that chance and you yourself, Mr Stride, publicly denounced her. You didn't support Liz Truss in that endeavour. So it's a bit ironic of you to talk about an economic rewire now when you had the golden opportunity a few years ago."

Stride responded: "The most important thing is if we're going to rewire the economy and have an economy that is thriving and growing, we've got to act with fiscal responsibility. In other words, the numbers have always got to add up.

"One of the things I will be saying this morning is to recognise that the approach that was taken at the back end of 2022 in that mini budget was not fiscally responsible, and we have to own up to that.

"We have to be honest about that, because what this country needs is a party now that is going to have fiscal responsibility hardwired into its budget."

Interjecting Stride again, Ben stressed that the Shadow Chancellor "never gave" Liz Truss or her fiscal plan "a chance".

Stride told GB News that Labour are 'messing up the economy'

Stride told GB News: "The problem was fundamentally that if you go out there with tens of billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts in what was then a fairly inflationary environment, you start to lose the confidence of the markets and then you start to lose control of the economy.

"Now we very quickly put that right, within a matter of weeks we had settled things down again. But nonetheless, there was a lesson to be learned then."

Taking aim at Labour's economic policies, Stride concluded: "We have the Labour Party that is messing up the economy, taking all sorts of bad economic decisions, blowing their fiscal headroom, being economically irresponsible.

"And we've got a Reform Party that is coming out with all sorts of commitments that are completely unfunded, that would be economically ruinous and fiscally irresponsible.

"We have to now be that party that will be absolutely ironclad when it comes to having fiscal responsibility right at our heart.

"Never again will we come out with commitments that we cannot explain how we can fund, we need to maintain the confidence of markets. And that's exactly what our policies going forward are going to do."