I watched some of Rachael Reeves' interviews over the weekend. I have seen many before. One of the recurring themes is that she is not going to hesitate from making ‘the difficult decisions'.
Reeves does not define precisely what these decisions are. That is typical of Labour's approach to any issue at present. If it cannot prevaricate nothing is ever said.
What is more telling is the continual reference to difficulty.
Is she trying to claim that she is very clever, and so only she can do these things?
Or, alternatively, is she suggesting that she is a normal mortal and that, therefore, what is going to be required of her is hard ? It really is not clear.
Maybe there is, anyway, a third option that I have not thought of, but whichever it is, this perpetual claim is deeply unappealing.
Is she saying that it is hard to decide to underfund the NHS, and so kill people , because that is what it appears that she plans to do?
Alternatively, is it hard to deny people the education that they deserve?
Or the social care that they need?
Or justice for those who have suffered from crime?
Alternatively, is it instead that it is hard to impose significant levels of taxation on those least able to bear it whilst allowing much lower levels of tax on those with the capacity to pay, which is exactly what is happening in the UK present, about which she is refusing to do anything?
Or maybe she is just saying that is it just really difficult to make any decisions when you lack a moral compass, a political philosophy, and any rational explanation for why you seek the power that you so obviously crave?
My suggestion is a simpler one. If you really think that being Chancellor is going to be so difficult that you have to talk about it all the time then you're not up to the job .
No one pretends that such a role is ever going to be easy. In that case what it requires is that the person willing to undertake it have the confidence to take on the task.
I'm not asking for the self-confidence that tips into arrogant foolishness. We all know the risks in that.
Instead, what is required is that quiet self-confidence that competence delivers.
Rachel Reeves clearly thinks she lacks that because of her perpetual references to the difficulty of the task. It really does make me wonder whether she is fit to undertake it.
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The charitable interpretation of Reeves’ position is that she’s attempting expectation management. That’s rational; the mess in which the Tories are leaving the UK will indeed be difficult to untangle.
On the other hand, most of us fans of this blog will agree with your assessment that Reeves will find the problem harder than it should be.
Thanks for this – I particularly liked “really difficult to make any decisions when you lack a moral compass, a political philosophy, and any rational explanation … “.
Two typos:
I think “refuses to do nothing” should be “refuses to do something” (or “anything”?).
“We all know the risks that.” – should be “in that”?
Thank you
I appreciate people editing me – when I have been though something three times (as I did that one) I cease to see the edits that no longer make sense
I think the difficulties she likes to refer to are those that the people of this country are going to suffer as a direct result of a Labour government’s choice to refuse to invest – whether that is in the NHS, climate change mitigation, public sector pay or anything else. There’s no money! As committed neoliberals the Labour leadership just know there is nothing much the state can do to help anyone or anything – except perhaps their own careers, generous party donors and ravenous American healthcare corporations standing ready to wolf down the NHS.
Accountability of politicians in the UK? They seem to have lost the habit! It’s all about what’s in it for me it would seem.
Low turnout at this coming general election seems guaranteed but the low accountability main stream media will do their studious best to avoid talking about this increasing lack of accountability in our democracy. Why? Because it’s what’s in it for me and us to do so!
Its media output will all be about focussing on what little Labour can do because the government’s credit card is maxed out. The Guardian of course will be trolling along with the rest of them on this just wait and see. Never thought I’d come to see the Guardian as a troll newspaper but because of its monetary illiteracy it is.
We all need as a society to understand that Market Fundamentalism is indelibly linked not just to monetary illiteracy but also lack of accountability!
Perhaps it is that Rachel thinks that, since she obviously can’t eliminate the unfairness and loopholes in the tax system that support her friends, the wealthy, it will be a really difficult decision to tax the least well off in society – but that she’s prepared to so.
Is that what she means?
It’s a perfectly viable thesis
From what Rachel Reeves has said on several occasions and also from what her colleagues have said, it is apparent that Labour are not up to the job of government any more than the current holders of power. As you said devising economic policy is difficult but there are options. Some policy changes could be implemented in a reasonably short time making a real difference to peoples lives. A competent chancellor would be able to create the framework for such changes.
I did not watch the programme as I thought that as Laura Kuenssberg is not really qualified to discuss economic issues in light of her past comments about the government maxing out its credit card!
I don’t have TV so I’ve never seen her perform, but I’m perfectly sure she has the arrogance to think she’s going to be a great chancellor. In a previous thread I linked some quotes from her which suggests she lack any empathy with the disadvantaged or those on “benefits”, and promised to be tougher than the Tories. Maybe she’s in the wrong party. (https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/03/07/what-are-labour-going-to-fund-their-spendiing-with-now/#comment-959256)
I think “tough”, “hard”, “difficult” decisions are simply double-speak. What she means is that she’s going to make people poorer, remove entitlements for those on “benefits”, make the rich richer, tax the rest of us harder, underfund crumbling public services and infrastructure, privatise more, clamp down on things she doesn’t approve of and so on, exactly like the Tories have done.
“Difficult” decisions are ones which are going to hit the majority of the population “hard”, which many of us will find “tough”, make those already teetering on the brink tip over the edge, but which she will try to persuade us is necessary to balance the books, rein in the credit card, bring down the debt, save future generations from the having the millstone of “our” borrowing around their necks and turbo-charge growth which will magically get us out of the Tory mess as the rich with so much extra dosh will unleash their dormant entrepreneurialism.
Rachel Reeves knows she’s in the right party to represent the interests of the wealthy few as opposed to the many. The Labour Party has been a right-wing Trojan Horse party at various times throughout its history due to monetary illiteracy. Clement Attlee would appear to have been the only Chancellor for a brief period in the early 1930’s who went on to be a radical Keynesian politician who understood the UK government could create its own money for spending. His ally in this understanding was the Liberal William Beveridge who said the following a year before Attlee became Prime-Minister:-
“The State in matters of finance is in a different position from any private citizen or association of private citizens; it is able to control money in place of being controlled by it.”
Page 156 “Full Employment in a Free Society” William Beveridge 1944.
“It is true that the national debt stands at £1.7 trillion, or around 87% of GDP. But this is not particularly high by historical standards – after the Second World War the national debt stood at 243%. Imagine if Clement Attlee had listened to those who insisted that this meant Britain had to cut back public services. There would be no NHS, and no welfare state. Britain would be a very different place.”
https://neweconomics.opendemocracy.net/index.html%3Fp=1091.html
Thanks
Beveridge was right
On the Laura Kuensberg show on Sunday, as well as interviewing Rachel Reeves, the Health Secretary Victoria Atkins was also on the show. In an extraordinary (and in my experience, unique) intervention, Hugh Fearnley Whitingstall, one of the three guests who regularly appear as pundits on the sidelines, called out VA during her interview on the lack of funding of the NHS, citing a ‘Taxing Wealth’ report that showed how an extra £100 billion could be raised. He didn’t say who wrote the report but perhaps it was yours Richard? HFW was pretty feisty throughout the programme and scathing of both the Government and Labour Party’s unwillingness to spend to grow the economy (and save the planet). He probably won’t be invited back.
It might have been mine.
Theirs is not that big
It very much sounds like Richard’s. Well done Hugh Fearnley Whitingstall for puuting the boot in to the government and labour. So yes you’re right, he probably won’t be invited back.
I admire your ability to endure repeated self punishment by continuing to listen to her. Just cant bear to hear her fall- back mantras of ‘iron clad’ and ‘fully funded’, which echo people’s ‘household budget ‘ common sense.
She and the rest of them – just wont engage in discussion of ideas – even the idea that the wealthy might pay the same rate of tax as the those on low incomes unable to cover basic living costs.
Everything she does or doesn’t say suggests she is going to cut NHS, public services further rather than consider fair taxes or creating an investment fund.
But that won’t be possible – they are already wrecked.
As you say she probably isnt up to the job – but has probably tried to convince herself she is – by producing a plagiarised book on women in economics..
They will have no alternative but to spend – but how the crisis will pan out – ……?
In the election there will a solid core of people who will vote for labour because that’s their party or they want the tories out. Of course they will have lost some owing to Gaza and to a lesser extent lukewarm climate policies. They are constantly trying to look hard enough and not scare away people who previously voted Tory.
Who knows what they would actually do in government but I am not optimistic and people who can wine and dine you are always remembered favourably.
Reeves really is hopeless isn’t she? My God, all she ever sounds like is a tory. This was a point made by one of my walk companions yesterday. Endlessly repeating the household budget analogy, so doing the tories’ job for them. Praising the city and refusing to restore the cap on bankers bonuses. Refusing to even discuss higher taxes for the wealthy so that even on her own terms of tax and spend she’s making it impossible to get the funds to rescue a collapsing public realm.
And now I see she and Starmer are refusing to commit to find money to bail out the bankrupt councils, even though this is a result of 14 years of the tory idiots massively cutting their direct grants to councils and councils’ costs simultaneously increasing. So letting the tories off the hook, and going along with the ‘profligate’ public sector narrative endlessly peddled by stupid and dishonest right wingers.
WTF is the point of her?
I wish I could answer that
Am I alone in having watched and listened with atonished delight as Joe Biden’s State of the Union address addressed – and in notably detailed terms – what he had done, was doing and plainly meant to do to make real improvements in the lives of ordinary Americans? The in-principle commitment to being fair to real ordinary folk, to support – indeed glory in – unionised labour, to respect women’s rights and confront racial inequality was like a speech from dreamland. AND – on the other hand, the sullen ranks of the ‘Trumplicans’, many adorned with the giant red kippers of their submission, spoke of their selfishness, inhumanity and greed with more eloquence than any of their would-be fuhrer’s bluster.
Though I am only too aware of the hideous features of American life and its grotesque inequalities of both wealth and race, the contrast with the miserable and defeatist language – one cannot dignify it with the term rhetoric – of Reeves and Starmer was that of a shining city on a hill and the slough of despond. They will do nothing of any significance to improve the lives of ordinary folk, not only because they are economically imprisoned by the ideas of the enmies of the public good – but, most of all, because the poverty of their language, the principal working tool of any politician, shows that they plainly do not care – let alone with the kind of fire in the soul which Biden, stammer and all, has no problem in communicating.
Despite the enduring US political theatre over the debt ceiling, they generally keep spending into the economy, maybe not enough, and maybe not always.
It’s a mystery why the UK, AUS and NZ don’t follow their masters!
I am not sure what you mean
What irks me is that her ambitions are limited to just taking the current Tory spending programme and making small changes to it. A bold or even competent chancellor intent on real change would define their own spending programmes,how much they cost and how they would be funded – and not use their opponent’s programme as a benchmark or yardstick.
Spot on
Exactly. New new new labour. Gutless, useless and pathetic.
I do agree with most of the criticism of Reeves and Labour. TBH they are probably economically to the right of Boris Johnson but not as crazy as the many of the Tories.
However I would make another couple of points:
1. Even if it were the case that Labour understood how money and public debt worked, why the Fiscal Rules are in place or the importance of a thriving public sector in a modern mixed economy, it has to be said the vast majority of the electorate and the press and media do not. In general people have been brainwashed and “educated” to believe a lot of orthodox neoliberal nonsense and do not have the mental capabilities that would allow them take on a more realistic set of models and more constructive policies. So even if Labour secretly did think differently, the run up to a general election would not be the time to embark on a re-education, and if the did it would be seized on by the right wing press.
2. Using the commonly used metaphors such “maxed out the credit card” is a good way to criticise the government record in a way that people can understand.
Nevertheless I am not optimistic. After all it was Labour that made the BoE independent and kicked off austerity.
All of which makes your blog so important and I am looking forward to George Monbiot’s new book The Invisible Doctrine
The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life). Good to see he seems to be embracing MMT because he is influential.
I am quite sure that if we polled “Do you know what a politician means by a fiscal rule?” a tiny number of people would answer in the affirmative.
Maybe I should do it…..
Starmer and Reeves have had years to layout an alternative to the “maxed out credit card” and its associated nonsense, and educate the public. Instead they have done the complete opposite.
Richard would you be willing to send all key journalists eg Today programme Kuensberg ., Evan Davies etc etc a copy of Taxing Wealth so they can stop repeatedly asking ” how would you fund that” to any Labour shadow minister that mentions doing anything.
Are you sure you’ve understood what Rachel Reeves means correctly?
“Difficult decisions” in political speak means difficult for the people on the receiving end of the decision.
As an example: abolishing the WFA and adding £5/week to the State Retirement Pension is an easy win for a Chancellor, but means difficult decisions for the home worker civil servants who administer it. Who then have the difficult task of getting another job.
Reeves has my vote as potential chancellor here.
I have lost your reasoning
Might you try again?
New strapline for Labour given Reeves’ control of their economic policy:
“Tough on the impoverished. Tough on the solutions to poverty”.
Surely it needs to be called the Nu-Trolling Party pretending to be interested in the problems of labour or the environment. First it floats a pledge then it u-turns it a few weeks later. It’s so hard to keep up with what they stand for other than a fan club for Rupert Murdoch and the City of London!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/11/is-labour-about-to-prune-plan-to-boost-workers-rights
The language of “fiscal responsibility” that Reeves is using is at best an attempt to reassure voters that Labour will be a “safe pair of hands.” I note that the same language was used by Labour in NZ and Labor in Australia. And if UK Labour follows suit, they will maintain that “fiscal responsibility” in office, maybe making a few tweaks around the edges, but sticking to the “fiscal rules” du jour while straining towards the holy grail of a government surplus. In short, you’ll get tepid growth, continuing inequality and austerity.
I don’t buy the ‘difficult’ bit being a problem for Reeves. Having supported Labour since 1971, it seems to me that the idea that Labour can’t be trusted with the economy is so ingrained with many voters, fed an endless diet of ‘tax and spend Labour’ by both the Tories and their supportive press, that any attempt to row against such a rip-tide in the run up to an election can only plant in uncommitted voters’ minds the idea that Labour would make their lives a whole lot worse.
Only once has Labour been elected on a rising economy.
MacDonald in 1924 inherited a massive mess from the Tories. Wilson in 1964 had to address the mess left by the Tory Chancellor Maudling who, guess what, made a ‘dash for growth’, and set off rampant inflation. Wilson had to try to clear up the Tory mess again in 1973, following the 1973 Tory Barber ‘dash for growth’ nonsense. Then there was Chancellor Lawson (much loved by Tories who mistakenly see him as some sort of guru), who let inflation rip in 1988/9. This was followed by the ERM and Black Wednesday in September 1992, under John Major and Norman Lamont.
So to 1997 and the only time Labour has taken over during a period when the economy was in a reasonable state. When that Labour government petered out in 2010, Labour was blamed by the Tories for the GFC, compounded by the asinine antics of Miliband who wandered about apologising for it, and allowed the Tories to own the narrative that Labour could never be trusted to run the economy. Only 6 months before Lehman collapsed, a certain G Osborne Esq. was criticising Labour for over-regulation of the City.
You can’t persuade voters that UK government finance is not like that of a household without years of very expensive marketing, and that in the teeth of a gale of hysterical Tory press painting Labour as economically reckless. To try to explain why a government does not have to watch the pennies is so counter-intuitive to most voters, it is pointless even trying when your sole focus has to be on winning the election. You have to play the game you have been given, not the one you would like to play.
So if I was in Reeves’ position, with an election any time from May to November, and knowing how one word out of place will see a massive pile on by the Tories and their hounds in the press, I would make sure I revealed as little as possible of my intentions with the economy. If that means playing the game, and then heaven forbid, making a ‘dreaded U turn’ after the election, then so be it. The aim is to get over the line. Nothing else matters.
This doesn’t wash any more. The Tories have now proved to all but the most stupid of the electorate that they can not only not be trusted on the economy, but have wrecked public services and just about everything else as well.
Which means any half competent opposition party with any pretence to be progressive needs to do a damn sight more than sound exactly like their increasingly discredited and collapsing right wing opponents. And they need to stop cowering and grovelling to the increasingly hysterical, extreme and irrational right wing propaganda outlets.
Try offering something positive to the electorate instead of sheltering in a foxhole.
The talk of “difficulty” is expectation management to try to minimise the buyer’s regret of which you’ve written previously, Richard. They know there will be much regret and they need to line up the buck-passing and victim-blaming excuses for THEIR inability to deliver anything that improves most people’s lives
Plus, it reminds me of the propaganda of a certain country in East Asia where the people are told that their struggles towards a better future, “in the face of all the opposition from enemies and circumstances”, is an Arduous March.
But for our elites, the arduous march will be from trading desk and boardroom to wine bar or exclusive club?
I think that one thing is quite apparently obvious:
Rachel Reeves is a fiscally conservative economist, who wants to do more austerity quite evidently given her and Labour’s stated plans, but cannot admit to it. Thus, “austerity” in interviews becomes “difficult choices” or “fiscal responsibility”.
It’s really high time we stopped pretending that Reeves’s economic policy is anything but reheated Osborne-ism. Just today she’s indicated that she would make spending cuts, it feels like we’re in Groundhog Day, but with the tint about to change from blue to red.
Labour Dropsy – swollen by prevarication not intent!
What will Reeves be saying about the shit from Thatcher’s public services privatisation programme now hitting the fan? Precious little we know can be predicted!
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/12/come-clean-on-secret-taxpayer-rescue-plans-for-thames-water-mp-demands
The constraints Labour seem to be accepting certainly seem artificial: In particular Quantitative Tightening. On the subject of QT, I would recommend that everyone takes a look at the Treasury Select Committee’s Feb 2024 report on that very subject. As this post explains, it is truly shocking, and, with a bit of reading between the lines, in itself offers a sufficient explanation for our never-ending mass murdering austerity. The British establishment is colluding with the Bank of England to destroy all the public money, or, in other words, is transferring the costs of dealing with more than a decade’s worth of crises, from the Financial Crash to COVID, which were met by creating new money, into hundreds of billions of real public debt.
https://gezwinstanley.wordpress.com/2024/03/11/stop-the-quantitative-tightening-scam/
The post includes a link to the Treasury Select Committee report.
I have read it ….
Thank you
It is grim