BORIS Johnson will tomorrow announce a “New Deal” to create jobs and pump cash into major building projects to ensure Britain “bounces back” from coronavirus.
The PM will unveil a multi-billion pound blueprint for reviving the economy, including £5billion of projects — many in the Midlands and North.
In a speech today, he will tell voters in the Blue Wall seats the Government is on a “mission to unite and level up” the UK.
It will be an attempt to draw a line under a miserable three months which has seen more than 43,000 coronavirus deaths, and wiped out 20 per cent of economic growth in April alone.
The number of Brits claiming jobless-related benefits has hit 2.8 million, with unemployment rising at its fastest rate since the Great Depression.
The PM has admitted the pandemic has been an “absolute disaster” for the UK economy and he warned of “bumpy times ahead”.
But speaking in Dudley, West Mids, he will say the Government will work to ensure the nation will “not just bounce back, we will bounce forward stronger and better and more united than ever”.
He will say he is following the same kind of economic policy as pursued by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the Great Depression in the 1930s.
It saw public money pumped into major infrastructure projects and helped America become a world superpower. Boris’s projects will include spending £1.5billion on hospital repairs — and more than that on upgrading schools and colleges.
Some £900million will be allocated to “shovel ready” projects, mainly in the Midlands and North, £142million on upgrading courts, £83million for maintaining prisons, £60million for temporary prison places and £100million on upgrading bridges and roads to tackle bottlenecks.
The PM is expected to say: “It sounds positively Rooseveltian. It sounds like a New Deal.
“All I can say is that if so, then that is how it is meant to sound. It is what the times demand.
“To that end we will build, build, build. Build back better, build back greener, build back faster and to do that at the pace that this moment requires.”
