It has been very hard to avoid discussion of Rachel Reeves on social media today. Her very obviously distressed state during the course of Prime Minister's questions has given rise to a great deal of comment.
Not only did it look as if she had been crying for a long time before arriving in the House of Commons, but she continued to cry whilst sitting next to Keir Starmer as he sought, almost entirely in vain, to defend his own position, and that of Rachel Reeves, from attack by Kemi Badenoch, who for once could hardly miss an open goal.
On one level, I have very little sympathy for Rachel Reeves. It was her intention to impose misery and absolute poverty on hundreds of thousands of people in the UK who have disabilities simply so that she could balance her budget. She picked on the most vulnerable when she could have either chosen to run a bigger deficit or to raise taxes in a multitude of ways. She chose not to upset the wealthy, but to pick on those who she thought would not argue back. Her own party's MPs chose to reject her plan, and she should accept that fact.
At another level, Rachel Reeves is a human being who is clearly out of her depth, and so very obviously distressed that it is impossible to imagine that she can currently undertake the tasks expected of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Any compassionate employer would be putting her on immediate leave to give her time to recover from the stress that she is suffering. This, however, is inconsistent with the demands of modern politics, so I suspect it will not happen.
Instead, the reality is that I rather strongly suspect that Keir Starmer will be undertaking a reshuffle of his team remarkably soon.
Rachel Reeves' credibility has gone.
So, too has that of Liz Kendall.
Yvette Cooper's rash demand that Palestine Action be sanctioned as a terrorist group now looks to be backfiring, with even the letters page of The Times declaring that this is wholly inappropriate.
Wes Streeting is very obviously nowhere near delivering what is required by the NHS.
And, meanwhile, David Lammy always looks like a Foreign Secretary who is struggling to create spaces that are as long as possible between his words as he attempts to find whatever meaningless phrase he can put forward as an excuse for the UK's inaction on the international stage when faced with crisis like the genocide in Israel.
To be blunt, Starmer's top team has failed him, but if he selected them, and they have all proved to be duds, he should come to the obvious conclusion that the problem is not just with them, but also with him.
I very much doubt that Starmer is planning to walk away from the role of Prime Minister, whether that would be the right thing to do or not. I do, however, suspect that he will have no choice but to address the problem that is now Rachel Reeves. If she is really as distressed as it would appear she was today in the House of Commons, it would take the most remarkable turnaround for her to function in office any time soon.
Having observed her for several months, that she was going to reach this point has long being apparent. She has looked increasingly stressed, tired, and out of her depth for months. Whatever happened today was not a momentary reaction, but the clear indication of a profound level of fatigue made apparent by stress that she is unable to manage.
If Starmer had any compassion, and that is open to question, he would now be reshuffling.
If he cared for Rachel Reeves, he would, for the time being, appoint her to a post without portfolio to provide her with the opportunity for a return in due course. Such opportunities always exist in government.
He would also look very hard at who might be able to do this job when they currently refuse to stand out from the crowd. The current Treasury ministerial team appears to lack any real talent in this regard, although I am quite sure that Darren Jones and Torsten Bell would both believe that they are ideally suited to the role.
There also appears to be no one else in the ministerial portfolio who has anything like the necessary economic understanding to take the job on, and Starmer is hardly likely to ask Rachel Reeves' predecessor, John McDonnell, to consider coming back.
Maybe he should look to the back benches, but even then, no one is shining out as having the necessary depth of knowledge.
So, I put forward another suggestion. I suggest that Starmer should not just reshuffle, but he should now break up the Treasury.
Its power is too great.
The demands it makes on the Chancellor are too big. The breadth of its scope requires too many skills to be possessed by anybody holding that office.
Anyway, the focus needs to be on government delivery, and not on finance, requiring a downgrading of its role.
This is the opportunity to split it into three new ministries. One would be a Ministry of Finance, which would manage the government's overall budget.
The second would be a Ministry of Taxation, which would take responsibility for HM Revenue & Customs, tax policy, and its integration into the rest of the government's goals, given that taxation is about a great deal more than revenue raising.
The third would be a Department for Economic Development, which does not mean growth, but does mean that the department would be responsible for delivering improvements in the economic well-being of the ordinary people of this country, however they might be generated, including by the promotion of economic redistribution, if that is necessary.
Split the job up in this way, and candidates for office might be found. Leave the post as it is, and failure would now appear to be hardwired within it.
Will Starmer have the courage to do anything like this? I don't know, but I do think you should.
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You may be interested in this comment on the uselessness of Starmer and his team and in particular his PPS Chris Ward MP
From a regular contributor to the Brighton Argus newspaper
https://andywinterbn1.wordpress.com/
Good article – thanks for the link.
Had a long conversation once with lloyd Russel Moyle who the glove puppet Ward replaced. Serious guy Russel-Moyle & booted out on a pretexted – probably engineered by McSwine. I agree with the main thrust of the blog – time to replace some of the glove puppets – with whom?
As for Reeves, she’s only crying becuase no more limos, no more fawning, no more…. my advice to Reeves … leave LINO and become a bank manager somewhere – anywhere – Hudson Bay? or perhaps a small South Island town in New Zealand.
Thank you and well said, Richard and Mike.
@ Mike: Yesterday, I learnt that the Fine Gael ancestors of McSweeney had fascist connections and may have fought with Franco.
I can trump you on that one – I know a relative of Lord Haw Haw – irish guy very old & ailing lives in Bx and is a proper old fascist. It is no surprise ref McSweeney – I wonder how long he will last?
MMT has Identified the UK’s primary fiscal failure areas.
(1) For a start. There is no such thing as an independent Central Bank in a Sovereign fiat currency economy.
(2) The 1995 Treasury Debt Management Review, set the the Central Bank to perform all government debt management functions.
(3) In late 1985 a new rule, the so-called “full funding rule”, was announced. Future sales of public sector debt were not to vary with the requirements of the money stock target, (now known as M4) but instead were to be kept close to the PSBR on an annual basis. This led directly to the Lawson “Boom and Bust” of the late eighties.
(4) The full funding rule was dropped in 1990; but, Brown brought it back in 1997. He created the Independent Central Bank and directed that it would not be responsible for debt management. Instead, the Bank’s role in debt and cash management would be transferred to the Treasury in the form of a separate Debt Management Office. It was established as an executive agency of the Treasury in April 1998. The formation of the DMO would complete the separation of debt and cash managemnt from Central Bank’s monetary policy operations; according to Brown.
(5) Until it is globally understood that issuing governmet debt (Gilts); has nothing to do with cash funding government’s spending and it simply replaces; on a temporary basis, Taxation. The latter, along with fees and charges for using that new infrastructure; extinguishes government fiat cash spending, after it has done the job it was created to do in building that national infrastructure.
(6) The government’s current account is called the Consolidated Fund. Nowadays, it finishes each fiscal year with a deficit. That deficit is filled by newly created Pounds Sterling which the Treasury pretends comes from a supernatural virtual Bank called the National Loans Fund (NLF). Hence, the Treasury has a bottomless pit full of this fiat currency that it will never run out of.
(7) In fiscal year 23/24, the NLF created £167.6 billion to fill the deficit in its Consolidated Fund (current account).
(8) In reality, Gilts provide benefit payments for Pension and Insurance Funds and handsome profits for Spiv City gamblers who have given up betting on Horses and Dogs at Ladbrookes.
BTW. Meanwhile, don’t bother writing to your MP to explain any of the above to you.
Harold Wilson split economic development from the Treasury in 1964. By 1969 the Treasury had killed it. They will kill any dilution of Treasury power in a centralised system because they are the ultimate central power. Starmer is ruthless but the Treasury are cleverer.
I’m sorry, but Starmer isn’t ruthless, he’s useless.
He has people behind him who are ruthless.
Ruthless in their destruction of anything remotely left wing in the party.
Thank you, both.
Graham is spot on.
Starmer has been groomed for this since the turn of the century.
I can’t think of anything like this that I have seen before in my life time.
But the real culprit of all this is Neo-liberalism which has people who attempt these jobs just tied up in knots aimlessly going around in ever decreasing circles because in actual fact, Neo-liberalism has ran out of road and the only route downwards is some sort of zombie apocalypse.
You are absolutely right Richard to suggest the alternatives – Labour has tried to do ‘Tory’ and choked on it.
Labour’s only choice is start to feed off its past, which would include trying to work meaningfully with what is left of any decent Liberals and other progressives who were always part of it anyway.
I’d rather see Labour go down fighting as a real Labour party than one of many with Neo-liberal indigestion.
Baker and Kauders very much on point.
There have been various attempts to break the Treasury stranglehold over the decades and seperate Economic Development Strategy from the year to year financing and taxing. Cant see Starmer or any of his crew having teh intellectual firepower to try anything like Richards suggestions.
Neither Torsten Bell or Darren jones seem able or willing to think outside the ‘there is no money’ box.
I agree wholeheartedly with your observations. However I do believe that there is an elephant in the room!
How does a new government work with Whitehall, Mandarins and those expectations that have been such a part of UK Politics?
Are we post democratic? How easy is a new government manipulated into the status quo? The belief systems of the geopolitical (obvs founded) ideals?
I believe these are the changes that we need.!
Morphing into what we have, has stifled so much of our progress that we no longer believe in the progress that is being delivered.
Whilst confiscation seems the wrong answer. Strings are pulled and division seems endemic. Sad face!
As President Harry Truman said “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” – should I be sympathetic? Should the elderly, the disabled, the newly unemployed be sympathetic? She, through her policies, has caused much distress amongst the elderly, amongst the disabled and amongst the newly unemployed. It is in most people’s characters to show sympathy to those who cannot cope – but enough is enough. Ms Reeves problem started when she did not include the truth on her CV – Starmer must have known this, and the failure is on them both and the ‘remainder’ of the team – has she had sympathy for those she, and her cohorts, have harmed?
Should you lose your humanity and compassion because someone else shows none?
No
But you might still think them unfit for office because they have
The Treasury is fixated in controlling the Budget Deficit on a quarterly basis. If it looks like there will be an “out of range” deficit that will make an embarasing headline in the Daily Mail, then all long term large capital projects like HS2 have funding paused. Contractors excersise terms in their contracts for “forced stop start” payments. The result being that infrastructure projects spend far longer in the planning stages; take far longer to complete at far higher prices than anywhere else in the EU.
Spain for instance, has built ten times more high speed track at one tenth the price per km of the UK. All the planning and funding streams are sorted at national government level, such that when the contractors are appointed, they simply have to turn up with their shovels and get stuck in.
Thanks
You cannot compare Spain & the UK. I drove across Spain – north – south – last year. It is an empty land – relative to UK – which could be described as small & crowded by comparison, which makes new infra such as high speed rail very difficult. Similar comments ref France (big and to a large extent – empty). HS2 should never have been built – instead, the 19th century rails routes (laid out & built in the period 1835 to 1860) need to be modified and signalling upgraded. Cheaper, faster.
Also – it take a bit of time for a high speed train to get up to speed. This predicates against stops much shorter than say – 150km – one of the reasons the Italians don’t have much in the way of high speed trains (towns not seperated by great distances).
Correct
Absolutely agree with Mike: some years ago me and my wife drove from the SE corner of Belguim down through France to Saint Jean de Luz in the far SW of France (over several days, of course). Used to driving through the UK and such countries as Holland, Belgium and even Germany, we couldn’t believe the emptiness of the place. Often miles between villages and, even when you came across a village, it appeared lots of the house were empty. And finding a petrol station was a problem – not something you’d ever say about the UK. So laying a railway line through open countryside doesn’t often represent a problem.
Ditto Mike’s point about the distance between station making high speed rail possible. Back when InterCity 125’s (remember them?) were being planned (and I worked on the railway) routes and timetables for the trains were set accordingly. So, for example, the 125 service from Nottingham to London only ever stopped at one other (scheduled) stop – Leicester – then full speed to London and there in 90 minutes. That remains the case even today, although it only applies to the peak time ‘commuter’ trains morning and evening now. So this factor in high speed rail is not rocket science, has been known about for decades, but somewhere along the line (no pun intended) got forgotten. And now what do we have to show for it? An absolute white elephant of a project which has swallowed more money that it would have cost to upgrade all track to electric, re-signal, and build new lines from East to West in the North. An absolute scandal.
Totally agree.
HS2 never made railways sense, at all. Not in the UK context.
I wouldn’t exactly say that. I’ve spent a lot of time in Italy on business and greatly enjoyed the Frecciarossa and Frecciabianca HSTs. Very good for travelling between Turin and Venice or Rome.
My comment seems to have got a bit out of sync. I was replying to Mike’s comment about a lack of Itailian High Speed trains. Having looked it up, I find that the Frecciarossa goes at 300 kph, the same at the French TGV, and the longest line is 1,300km. Italy is a long country. Even Turin to Venice is 405km. Gosh! Taking me back to happy days!
The contractors have made money like there is no tomorrow because of the following:-
The contract to build HS2 was “design and build” and payment was cost plus, I think it was 4%. But this means that the contractor can build a very expensive railway and that will increase their 4% payment.
The Treasury decided that it would take twice as long to build the remainder, I can guarantee that the contractor nor HS2 Ltd cut their labour by 50%.
One comment I heard as that the tunnelling was cheaper that building on the surface, note tunnelling is generally at lease twice as expensive as on the surface.
HS2 has to really push the cost up to beat the Irish Children’s Hospital which is all ready 300% over budget, has 17 end dates (it is still not finished). Bam the contractor must have made an absolute fortune, HS2 you have competition, which contract be the most profitable?
Richard, you ponder “If Starmer had any compassion, and that is open to question,”
If Starmer actually had any compassion, he would never have acted and spoken in the way he has with regard to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. You only have to have the very slightest scintilla of compassion to appreciate what has been happening in Gaza is beyond normal human comprehension in its very evil intentions. And yet Starmer has no conscience, no compassion, no humanity. The man is a monster and I hope one day he faces retribution at The Hague. He has literally no redeeming features.
Any employer or manager with an ounce of compassion would have told Rachel Reeves today that she did not need to be at PMQs. It would be the normal human action in the face of such distress. Only a selfish uncaring bully would have allowed her to be seen by all the cameras in such distress. Starmer, useless politician, useless human.
Agreed, entirely
I accept that an employer or manager could or would have offered compassion – or maybe she could or would have had the grace and humility to say ‘please – I am not up to work today’ and just kept in the background – instead she put herself and her distress in the spotlight – was she hoping and expecting understanding, when she herself has understood none of the distress that she (and her cohorts) have caused?
Her attendance was not a wise move on her part, and a clear indication that at present she should at least be on leave.
It would be a good start, unfortunately the treasury would still be London dominated. I also suspect that even if the political insight to do this was miraculously acquired, that it would be reversed within a few decades as lobby groups and morally corrupt governments form.
You would need a robust mechanism outlining the conditions to change such a structural change which we all know would be beyond this government.
Oh, and can we please fill the treasury with people that have spent more than 10 years outside of London?
I think a 3-way split of the Treasury would be an excellent idea.
Assuming that Starmer doesn’t have the guts or inclination to do anything so radical, the obvious choice (in terms of current front benchers) for a replacement for Reeves would be Ed Miliband. Towards the left end of the current cabinet politically speaking (although that’s a low bar to clear, to be sure), economically literate and an ex-Treasury adviser – so he knows his way round the department and would be able to work with it to get the desired results. It’s very unlikely of course, because McSweeney hates him (too left wing).
High time Macavity was sent packing. Could that be achieved by an incoming Chancellor, perhaps by them refusing to take the job on if Macavity didn’t go?
The only way to break up the Treasury that will stick is to break up the UK into nations and regions, all with their own tax raising powers. Nothing else will work because the Treasury has about nine centuries of experience in survival.
Ditto the Home Office.
Sorry – but unless you are talking about independence that makes no sense at all. Ultimately you can only have one money creating and taxing authority in a country because they are the flip side of each other. To pretend tax can be devoloved and money creation is not is to simply deliver a recipe for macroeconomic failure.
Not quite the case. Money creation stays with the central bank, but taxing authorities can be separate. It needs a written constitution and a federal state to work. Everyone, citizen and business, would have two taxing authorities. Efficiency suggests that the lower level authority ought to act as agent for the federal authority, so there is only one office for citizens and businesses to work with.
Think outside the box: is it really necessary to have a completely centralised state?
With regard to macro policy, yes
That is by definition the case
Sorry, but your claims on this are just wrong.
I’ve said before that a very good candidate for the job of Chancellor would be Miatta Fahnbulleh, and she is now an under secretary. But that won’t happen, and my money is still on Torsten Bell, accepting that he is, as you pointed out, Richard, a neoliberal, with which I do now agree. Your post was last night and things have moved on a bit now. Starmer is publicly supporting Reeves, but I am still expecting a reshuffle.
a late post – and ‘lifted’ from the comments in todays Times (so my apologies to whoever composed this) =
“Now you say you’re sorry
For being so untrue
Well, you can cry me a reever
Cry me a reever
I cried a reever over you
… You drove me, nearly drove me
Out of my head
While you never shed a tear”
Clever