These are my contemporaneous notes made as Reeves spoke on her Spending Review this lunchtime. I stress - they were just notes - nothing more, but they do include some commentary - and I found nothing to celebrate.
An analysis will be available later.
She want to make people better off
So she starts with £22 billion Tory hole
And she pretends she has solved all the problems
Most of her claimed have not come close to happening
She claims it has
She claims interest rate cuts are hers to take credit for
She claims we have a trade deal with the US - is she mad?
Wants to deliver renewal for everyone
Security is key, apparently
2.3% total spending increases in real terms, she says
But that is total - £113 billion is CDEL
She says there is no austerity
BUT allocation is not clear as yet
She claims she has a better fiscal rule - she says they are non-negotiable - but she has already changed them once
And spending is not funded by tax receipts as there are lost of other receipts
She says extra capital is £113 billion - but the Tories planned £90 billion of that. She cannot claim it all.
The household analogy is out in force - the government has no money of its own
Stop playing Reform politics
National security is her number 1 concern - and it will deliver nothing in to people's pockets.
2.6% for defence. £11 billion for defence and £600 million for security services.
£4.5 billion ‘investment' in munitions. How is tat investment?
We are going to be a ‘defence industrial super power'.
The military industrial complex rules.
Now to small boats. Border security to now be £430 million a year
Asylum backlog to be cleared - at a cost of unknown sum supposedly saving £1 billion a year - but no explanation of how. Hotel use will end.
Securenomics - where things are made matters. Apparently the Tories inflated global gas prices - total ignorance of how energy is priced in the UK
£30 billion for nuclear
£14 billion for Sizewell
The rest - £2.5 billion for small modular reactors
And many more to come. How does this add up?
Expanding Sellafield - at what cost?
We need to be at the forefront of the global race for new nuclear technologies.
£2.5 billion fusion.
Carbon capture and storage gets some more money - how much is not clear - not said.
Great British Energy - a private equity fund - is to get more money and it delivers no energy at all
No mention of renewables at all. None!
Scunthorpe saved - but Port Talbot wasn't and nor was Grangemouth - no explanation for that.
She refers to our great country - which clearly means England.
She implies all the steel we will now use will come from the UK - which is utter nonsense.
She did finally mention Port Talbot.
Innovation - our universities are world leading and we're proud of them. So what will happen those that go bust? £22 billion for R&D - means what?
£2 billion for AI action plan - means what?
Increasing British Business Bank - loans up to £25 billion - again, means what?
Young people - we only need builders and engineers apparently. This is absurd. Providing £1.2 billion a year by 2035 for this - so sweet FA in reality now.
Cheapo jokes about Badenoch do not help.
Homes - planning reforms allow building - and environmental destruction - and we need social housing - so it will get £39 billion - biggest injection in 50 years (not hard when inflation is ignored)
This does not support building - it supports builders
Now £10 billion for Homes England - not at all clear what this means
On to transport - £15 billion for this, including Doncaster airport to ave Miliband's seat
This pot of £15 billion is apparently limitless - includes raul electrification that has already been done
Norther PowerHouse Rail will get more money - no idea what
Oxford will be connected by £2.5 billion to Cambridge
Wales - £445 million for rail in Wales over 10 years
Nothing for Scotland it seems….
£52 billion for Scotland - bit over a decade
Don't spend it all at once
Retail - 350 communities to get funding for parks, youth facilities and libraries - just properly fund local councils and don't make it funds to bid for
Growth Mission Fund - Southport pier to benefit
Police - prisons. £7 billion for prisons. Half of the transport budget. Crazy.
£2 billion for the police.
She claims credit for falling interest rates again. She has accepted public sector pay awards. She ignores the doctors.
£3 bus far cap is not a spending review issue.
Now she is scraping the barrel. Say she will upgrade millions of homes - no figure attached.
Taxpayer money claim made - there is no such thing as taxpayer money.
Savings - fewer paper clips. Sales of land. Waste will go - no figures.
Yet more political diatribe. She really knows how to alienate people.
Apparently state school children can only be supported by adding VAT to private schools - an opportunity now closed. And free school meals are not an education issue - they are a poverty issue. She is wildly confusing the two.
She says she will beat child poverty but no mention of the two child cap. She is not doing what is absolutely necessary
Apparently dormant asset fund has to be dredged for money for music and arts education - of £150 million
£4.5 billion extra a year by 2035
£2.3 billion a year for school rebuilding - hopelessly inadequate in the face of WRACS
Last of all, the NHS. Lots of stupid comments on Reform. Absurd claims made about improved performance. Word salad is being delivered by the bucket load.
Claims she is training more GPs whilst ignoring the fact that very large numbers are now unemployed as the NHS will not give them jobs. This is incoherent nonsense.
Claims record cash investment - 3% - but this is below 3.6% trend this century - so it is only a record in cash terms - which she carefully said.
Yet more nonsense.
The summary is embarrassing given what we know of Labour performance.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
It would be a good idea if nations, regions, and local authorities raised their own taxes. Then this performative game of throwing something for eveyone into the air could be abolished. Levelling-up via transfers between governments in lieu of endless grants and fights, based on a GDP per capita formula.
That would curb Treasury power, and also curb English rule over the other nations.
Central power leads to all the absurdities you have noted.
Sorry – but this is not true.
You are missing the whole point of taxes. There are six reasons to tax:
1) To ratify the value of the currency: this means that by demanding payment of tax in the currency it has to be used for transactions in a jurisdiction;
2) To reclaim the money the government has spent into the economy in fulfilment of its democratic mandate;
3) To redistribute income and wealth;
4) To reprice goods and services;
5) To raise democratic representation – people who pay tax vote;
6) To reorganise the economy i.e. fiscal policy.
Hello Richard i was wondering if using a Transaction Tax on the 4 Trillion Dollars that goes thru The city of London every day is feasible say a 0.25 tax could raise billions daily and Trillions a year which could then be placed in a Sovereign Wealth fund which could then provide the massive overhaul this country so badly needs in all areas. I look forward to yr thoughts and those of other contributors . Thanks
The answer is no.
The margin on most of thsoe trillions is much, much smaller than 0.25%.
There would be no tax to collect.
I am not saying no to financial transaction taxes, but they have to be more sophisticated than that, and the revenue potential is not that big unless we go in a very different direction, as I explored in The Joy of Tax.
I’ve got a survival at sea certificate and I could do better
Reeves Needed to Deliver a Vision — She Delivered a Performance
This was not a serious fiscal reset. It was a carefully choreographed set-piece heavy on narrative, light on delivery. Major areas — climate, social care, child poverty, education infrastructure — remain underfunded or ignored. The speech substitutes language like “securonomics” and “renewal” for serious public investment and structural reform.
Agreed. My analysis is out soon.
Jamie Dimon, (could so easily change one letter in that surname) CEO of JP Morgan, says Reeve is doing great. Make of that what you will.
I have…
I’m tearing my hair out! (Not that there’s much left to tear out since last time I chopped it I took off too much)
Did start watching Reeves presenting the “spending review” on Sky News, but it was all so depressing and stupid I put on amazon music instead – Tom Petty songs have definitely cheered me up. I’ve told the family that I want “I won’t back down” played at my funeral. I guess that reaction shows what I felt about Reeve’s so-called “Budget” or whatever the hell she calls it! Rolls eyes.
Anyway, we’re off to open a bottle of Champers to continue cheering me up as it’s our 54th Wedding Anniversary today!
Good song
I am of an age and not as sharp. Hay fever makes everything worse. And then Reeves comes on our screens and insults our intelligence!
Richard’s analytical comments are wonderful antidote. If only he did hay fever remedies.
Recently I left the Labour Party after many year’s membership. Prof Ralph Miliband warned that the Labour Party would not deliver many, many years ago. He was right. This is even more evidence.
Thanks Richard. I hope you find the energy to keep up the brilliant work. But don’t forget the hay fever remedy. And in your spare time please start a new, responsible, left wing party.
🙂