According to Politico this morning, the headlines for Reeves are not good:
“Five years of record taxes” (Telegraph) … “Tax hikes and extra cuts on the way” (the i) … “Tax rise fears cloud Reeves' fiscal fix” (FT) … “Balancing the books on the backs of the poor” (Mirror) … “Reeves accused of balancing books at expense of the poor” (Guardian) … “Growing pains for Reeves hit home” (Sun) … “Reckless Rachel tanks economy by killing growth” (Express) … “Deluded” (Mail) … “Reeves squeezed by Trump” (Times).
I am not surprised.
This was a grim statement.
Of course, there will be tax rises to come.
They should only be on the wealthy.
And few seem to have noticed the anticipated mortgage increases as yet, about which I am right, as the OBR report says:
Average interest rates on the stock of mortgages are expected to rise from around 3.7 per cent in 2024 to a peak of 4.7 per cent in 2028, then stay around that level until the end of the forecast. The high proportion of fixed-rate mortgages (around 85 per cent) means increases in Bank Rate feed through slowly to the stock of mortgages. The Bank of England estimates around one-third of those on fixed rate mortgages have not refixed since rates started to rise in mid-2021, so the full impact of higher interest rates has not yet been passed on.
There will be no respite from the misery until the wealthiest pay their fair share of tax and interest rates are cut.
Solving this crisis is not about rocket science. It's about doing the bleedin' obvious.
Reeves has made the headlines, and no one likes what she's doing. That's some achievement.
Make no mistake, this is a massive political moment for Labour. Starmer now has no choice but to reset, and Reeves will be going.
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On the basis that Freebie-Reevie goes – perhaps later this year? Who replaces her? The LINO line-up is mostly Starmer yes-puppets.
Looking on the bright side, LINO achievements to date: frozen granny growth (yeah I know – unfair – but why should I be?) and looking ahead, poor people growth. Miserable Britain? growth. Public services falling apart: accelerating! growth. Impressive stuff from somebody (Freebie) that was never really part of society & thus could never be detached from it.
I think that they are all in it together.
If you are rich, this Labour Front Bench delivers.
That is what may count in their favour.
A report from Citizens Advice is here
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/policy/publications/things-can-only-get-better-how-to-prevent-5-more-years-of-living-standards-stagnation/
I would add to that a national Council Tax Benefit scheme
My fear about Reeves has always been that she was an imposition on Starmer in the first place. His first choice was soft-left Annelise Dodds – unless that was all cover for the left whilst they got their ducks in a row, quite possibly – but that Reeves is kind of the insider of the more powerfully financed right-wing of the party. So Starmer isn’t really all that in charge? Furthermore, he and a lot of other people seem to think being unpopular is a good thing – translated to “taking tough decisions” and being “grown-up”. So this will continue and he will give her plenty of rope to hang us with. I really do hope you’re right and she’s gone soon – but who would replace her? Would they try anything all that radically different?
Thank you, Michael.
Dodds was cover, as was Starmer’s programme.
Starmer knows Streeting and Rayner want the top job, so has Reeves (and even Lammy) on board to keep these two away from a great office of state. Starmer is a creature of the Blair machine and knows Streeting and Jones are really their preferred options.
They do see being unpopular as a good thing, “being adults in the room”, “no more student politics”. They think this impresses Big Finance and the media, for whom they want to work after.
The incentives in modern western politics drive this outcome.
You’d think that they would be more focussed on the incentive of getting re-elected, but apparently they don’t give a monkeys about that any more than they give a monkeys about those whose benefits they are cutting.
It’s not just the damage they are doing to the welfare of the populace which makes my mind boggle, it’s how these career politicians think they can possibly win re-election given their terrible ratings, terrible policies and the terrible outlook for the economy which they have helped to create. It can’t just be about being handed cushy sinecures when they are booted out of office, surely?
I agree, but how would you define wealthy and would you include owners of empty London mansions
No steer Kier and Rachel from accounts are driving the UK economy to a cliff edge of a very deep recession.
I see that the Treasury is pressing to end cash Isas. Expect that UK local authority pension funds to be merged by Labour and guess who will get the most benefit? Of course the well protected City financial concerns.
The UK fantasy continues, the MoD and Ms Reeves, sprouting utter nonsense about “making the UK a defence industrial superpower”.
It’s difficult to see how running down the already small number of troops in Estonia and leaving ten tanks is evidence of the UK being a defence industrial superpower.
Can someone please explain ” it’s no longer austerity , it’s doing more with less”??
That’s easy
That’s bullshit
“making the UK a defence industrial superpower”……….whilst being unable to produce primary steel:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/27/british-steel-scunthorpe-blast-furnaces-closure-plans-job-risk
used in things like tanks, guns etc. The UK being dismantled day by day – right in front of our eyes, by LINO.
She is bullshitting
And with all this, one must always keep a small eye on the next election and Labour’s prospects which are grim and getting worse (all entirely through their own volition), and so ask oneself just what is going to follow?
Because I have a feeling it is not going to be pleasant.
Faced with the multiple crises of the last ten years, from Brexit (to both Britain, and its undermining of the EU), through Covid, the Ukraine war and Russia’s resurgent Soviet-style imperialism, to the US deliberately, and suddenly overturning the American-determined world order (developed and exploited by Trump, but not wholly a Trumpian idea); in consequence of this complete return to disorder in Europe, both Britain and Germany have had to face rethinking their whole geopolitical status in the world.
For the British Press this is largely about defence spending; and and acknowledgement that everybody in Europe (including Britain) has been freeloading on American defence commitments for too long*. Germany’s “freeloading” has to be set against the bald fact that for much of the last eighty years it was both policy and orthodoxy, that nobody in Europe was willing to endorse a rearmed Germany; including the Germans. That is just a fact. We have no excuse for Britain’s failure; everything we have actually done in the last twenty years in Europe (and in opening London and Britain to Putin oligarchs), has been an encouragement to Putin and Russian ambitions.
Germany has determined that fundamental change is required. The German and European crises can only be faced by immediate and fundamental change; to defence, to the economy, to the constitution. Starting with ditching the critical Schuldenbremse (fiscal rules); that both changes the constitution and enables the German Government to transform investment in defence, infrastructure and the economy; and in ways, and at a scale the private sector could not initiate or complete. Chancellor Merz is taking on the task systematically to invest €1Trn (€1,000Bn) into the German economy to achieve the required transformation, as quickly as it can be managed.
Compare and contrast the response of Britain to the same crises. Britain insists nothing has changed. The US is not changing its priorities. We have a Special Relationship**, Britain is the leader in Europe, and the bridge between the EU, the US and the “willing”. This is all just a “blip”. At least, this is the British fantasy; its purpose seems to be no more than keeping the British public soporifically quiet, while a panicky British government flaps around pointlessly, because it doesn’t understand, and refuses to accept what has just happened to their whole vision of an orderly world. Compare Germany and Britain’s actions in response to what eadh can see staring it in the face: Rachel Reeves gave you the figures yesterday.
This is what we are going to do. More Austerity. We are going to cut £14Bn of expenditure, and spend £2Bn on defence (all so that we have £9.9Bn of fantasy ‘headroom’ in 2030, based on OBR forecasts, that have never, ever been met). That’s it.
With both a British political leadership like Starmer, Reeves and the Labour Party; and an opposition like Badenoch and the Conservatives; and the Absurdist Farage floating around in the background; I think I can safely say that Britain has virtually reached rock-bottom; and therefore things will soon enough become much, much worse, for everyone, and then go from bad to worse.
* If you wish to see what freeloading, and defence incompetence looks like, spool back to Boris Johnson’s pastiche Churchill strutting his stuff in Kyiv; and then watch his hapless ignorance on Britain’s preposterous defence priorities; unfolding like a slow-motion car crash in front of the contemporary Defence Select Committee. He makes Britain and the Conservatives look more like a pastiche, 1930s Chamberlain Government.
** We don’t have a Special Relationship with the US. And it costs the US precisely nothing to say it does, if it pleases the cheap and cheerful British gophers. What does a Special Relationship with the US look like? Ask Netanyahu. In fact ………. ask Putin.
Thanks John
Apologies for moderation taking a long time this morning
“The fiscal framework is harming debt sustainability. As previous OBR reviews have noted, the greatest risks to the UK’s public finances come from long-term issues like climate change, declining population health and demographic shifts. Mitigating and adapting to these risks requires preventative spending, with costs likely to be greater the longer we leave it to respond. The current fiscal framework, with its cycle of short-term forecasts driving decision-making, is poorly equipped to help us get ahead of these risks, which yesterday’s outlook warns are “putting the public finances on an increasingly unsustainable path” (New Economy Brief on the Spring Statement/OBR Forecast)
Reeves decision making is simply dragging the OBR down with her, and the Government. It isn’t just her debt sustainability plan that isn’t working. The lack of preventative spending over fifteen years means the infrastructure is disintegrating, and there are desperate situations across all the public services. Nothing works properly anymore. Labour’s relentless economic mismanagement isn’t sustainable.
Much to agree with
Do you consider the Marshall plan freeloading? For me it was always about American military hardware and boots on the ground in Europe whilst we offered up our economies.
NATO was just creating economic space for the US corporate invasion.
No, I don’t. The Marshall Plan was an extraordinary achievement; it transformed Germany, and rescued Western Europe from endless bitterness. Compare that with the Versailles Treaty, 1919 – and what happened to Poland in 1945; the country Britain went to war to defend in 1939 (and couldn’t and didn’t), and lost to the Warsaw Pact, and Stalin.
Your cynicism is excessive here; of course there were benefits for the US, and everybody in Europe in 1945 wanted to be part of whatever the US had. The real difference now is that the tawdry current generations of Britain, Europe and the US are constitutionally incapable of doing, or even attempting a Marshall Plan. There would just be lots of Twittering guff and spin, Whats Apps, triumphalism, blowhard pie-in-the-sky and an endless cohort of Musks ‘running’ everything into the ground. When we cannot see that background any longer; that is when we know that WE have finally lost the plot.
Agreed, John
This is managed decline.
Anyone who thinks Starmer doesnt know what he is doing and his acolytes… Starmer is a member of The Trilateral Commission – never seems to get mentioned anywhere, funny that.
Good phone in happening just now on Radio Scotland Mornings.
Do you think there is any hope that Starmer, Reeves et al will ever notice that the population of the UK is circa 68,000,000 and not limited to the relatively few billionaires and millionaires that they’re pals with, or want to be pals with (their wealth)?
They appear to be blind and deaf to the suffering they’re causing amongst most of the population. Don’t they care that more and more children are being pushed into poverty, that young people can’t buy a flat or house but are either living with their parents or in shared accommodation at ever increasing rents? Don’t they give a damn that families can’t eat and heat?
They’re talking about more tax rises on the poor but the rich are not even in their sights.
Why the heck (or expletive of your choice) do we put up with this crap?
Thank you.
You would be surprised how or how quickly once elected or on the trail / make (so not yet on the take), they become insulated.
Working in and around Whitehall, living and private gatherings in the nicer London suburbs and London’s provincial satellites, holidays abroad and an obsession with the US (shows like The West Wing, NY media, Ivy League academia and wedge issues / culture wars ) have that effect.
The wannabes, often to be found in organisations like Labour in the City, are even more middle class and detached.
Britain feels like 1980s USSR, deluded and detached ruling class, and 1990s Russia and Ukraine, looting by oligarchs, sometimes foreign. One can add indicators of social distress.
Outcomes. A failure to support gov services and a failure to tax has consequences. Oddly, this was illustrated today by two seemingly seperate but related articles.
In the first, the CPS (& police) have the bandwidth to harrass two black people calling each other the n-word – but in friendly terms (other examples of harrasement/total failure of judgement were given)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/24/racist-n-word-black-person-cps-hate-crime-person-of-colour-court
In the second, there is synchonised whining by the polds that they don’t have resource. But apprently they do when it comes to people using words in a non-hate fashion (strewth its come to the point where I sense that I can’t even use the n-word here just to make the bloody point).
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/27/police-too-overworked-to-investigate-crimes-properly-england-wales-northern-ireland
This is how voters in red-wall seats will see this: “f’ing plods have the f’ing time to go after nowt, but they don’t have the time to go after the f.kers that stole my bike – twice”
Deform will weaponise this & rightly so. It’s not just about resource, it’s about focus & the imbeciles infesting Wezzie don’t give a stuff about what they see as “minor crime” but they will legislate such that two black people using the n-word to each other get hauled before a court (or the coconut example). A ruling elite, ruling for its benefit and Blackrock (I am very tempted to re-name this company to better reflect what it will do to the country – but this is a family orientated site – so I won’t)..
Thank you, Mike.
Around the time of Cressida Dick’s departure from the Met in 2022, I chatted with a family friend who was soon to retire from the Met. He explained that being the head was a political job and that’s how politicians rose to head the force, adding how Dick’s predecessor told the Home Secretary during the interview process that he could do the job and perhaps more with fewer boots on the ground or at stations, music to the ears of the coalition. That’s how May thought getting rid of 20k odd police wasn’t going to have an adverse impact on the public.
Not long after, Liberal politician and City of London fan Sharon Bowles applied to become governor and said that was a political job, too.
Fun Fact (not):
Kirsty McNeill, Labour MP for Midlothian supports Labour in its endeavours to force a further 50,000 children into poverty.
Perhaps you’ve never heard of her. That’s understandable. We, in Scotland, know about her; she’s also the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. A quick look at her Wiki page will give you this:
“Prior to being elected, McNeill was Executive Director of Policy, Advocacy and Campaigns at Save the Children.” Yes, that’s right, SAVE THE CHILDREN!
I would suggest that makes her a bit more than “insulated”. It makes her a cold-hearted excuse for a human being. Just like most of her colleagues.
Has Save the Children ever done so?
Or has it created a lot of NGO jobs
I worked with it for a while and was not impressed.
I’m very cynical about a lot of charities which seem to provide high quality living for those who manage them. Quite often, the directors/managers turn up as MPs.
It seems to me, Save the Children should be saving children from UK governments of whatever stripe. Not that I expect them to. Not many of their directors and managers seem at all charitable.
Thank you, both.
Richard is correct.
Mum used to volunteer for STC and Unicef, but left in disgust when they became career stepping stones for wannabe Labour / blairite politicians and even political families.
The blue eagle is principal banker to a charity founded in an ancient university city. An ancestor firm of the blue eagle hails from the same city, hence the connection. The city is wealthy, so the charity is left lots of legacies. That rarely leaves the pockets of senior staff. Said charity has a Paris office, too.
It’s remarkable that the likes of Torsten Bell, who did some good work at the Resolution Foundation, has now taken the leap into politics… and is proving to be as inept as the rest of LINO. I realise he’s yet another PPE-er, so is useless by association, but you’d think his years at the RF might have given him a bit more of an insight into what would benefit the poorest in society. Yet no, apparently not. And he’s useless at the politics side of things as well, just like his PM.
I never believed in RF
For clarity, is that increase in mortgage interest rates an anticipated increase in the remortgage rates from where they currently are, or an increase in the overall average rate due to the transfer of those from the historical low rates to the current rates?
Either way, it really highlights the nonsense of the base rates being where they are. Baffling to me that people can be in any way surprised that growth is going to be stagnant when you needlessly ensure huge proportions of what could otherwise be disposable income is paid as interest.
Both.
I’m lucky enough to currently be on a fixed rate around 1.5% (a little higher than this, I think) which runs until October 2026. How I wish I’d signed up to a 10 year deal! It would only have cost me another 50 quid or so a month over the 5 year deal.
It’s not a huge mortgage, but if we have to remortgage at a rate near 5%, well, I’ll have to tell the kids we won’t be going on holiday as often. (Not that we are at all extravagant and only holiday in the UK).
I advised a neighbour to take a deal for the rest of his mortgage. He did. He buys me a present every Christmas.
Do you think that as the economic growth inevitably doesn’t return, the central banks will lower interest rates to “encourage investment”, or will their sole focus on the arbitrary 2% inflation target; which is unlikely to be met due partly to their high interest rates and international trade wars, result in these unnecessary rates hanging around for a long time yet?
The target is what matters to them most
Further to AC Bruce’s second comment, STC’s UK HQ is in a nice part of town, within walking distance of my office. Their former CEO has married into a political dynasty and was called Gucci and Grace Mugabe by the poor bloody infantry.
Aurelien has written about how they often make bad situations worse, especially in Sudan and Bosnia. Craig Murray has commented similarly.
In the third world, these charities are increasingly regarded with suspicion. USAID falls into that camp, too, despite what Dixiecrats bleat.
I am praying to any deity that will listen that Starmer changes tack soon. All day, under every comment section to every video or article critical of the budget, I have seen comments like “vote Reform before it’s too late,” or similar sentiments. Labour is handing the keys to Number 10 to Farage, and all Reform has to do is sit back and do nothing. None of the Reform supporters are paying attention to the fact that Reform agrees with Labour on welfare, and would have to slash it further to deliver tax cuts to ‘incentivise’ business if they gained power. Reform MPs have done nothing but talk about scroungers and cheats on welfare, but are getting away with it because they aren’t Labour. I’m also becoming increasingly concerned about Farage hijacking the inequality debate that is gaining momentum, blaming it on immigrants. This is just as the Greens are trying to target the working class. I don’t see this ending well at all.
Reality and Reform to not have an overlap on a Venn diagram
I firmly believe that the people at the top of the labour party are deliberately making the party unelectable at the next general election.