As the Guardian notes this morning:
Rachel Reeves will claim that cutting red tape for City firms will have trickle-down benefits for households across Britain, as she tries to drum up support for a new financial services strategy.
A raft of regulatory reforms are due to be announced by the chancellor on Tuesday, in what the Treasury says will be the “biggest financial regulation reforms in a decade”. It will come before her Mansion House address to City bosses during a dinner at Guildhall in London on Tuesday evening.
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This is not unexpected. Reeves is following the orders of her controllers – happliy and willingly because she has been groomed to do so.
As the other blog “Selling England by the Pound” shows, “it was the city wot done it” (obvs working hand in glove with the politicians).
Doubtless a future Gibbon will write another “Decline and Fall” on the meteoric rise and fall of the UK.
Does not have to be like this but with people like Reeves (& her ilk – plenty of ilk out there) it is a certainty: decline, fall & possibly civil war when UK/English serfs get sufficiently unhappy and Watt Tylers start to appear.
Thank you, Richard.
Blighty has its own version of the Bourbons.
It beggars belief that someone of her age and experience, the Bank of England, if one believes her BS, has not learnt the lessons of the past hundred years.
A dozen years ago, some banksters and I went to a talk after hours by Andy Haldane, then executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England. We could talk out of turn, did so and were scathing about big finance’s malign influence on policymaking AND the lack of history taught in economics classes.
I have sat alongside Philip Augar and lamented similarly.
As night sure follows day, the crash is coming. Rachel from complaints, not accounts, may have got lucky and secured herself a golden parachute by then.
Agreed: the crash is coming.
Therre is no way around that now.
Lots of good posts on this subject matter, almost criminal to try and add another………….
The thing for me is this: We know that the contemporary markets are inherently criminal anyway and that if you cannot make money within those rules, then all you are doing is saying that there are no rules at all and it is open season.
As happened last time, as risk changes hands at frightening pace, when the music stops, someone will be left hold a bag of shit somewhere.
But it does not matter, because they will get bailed. And then no doubt, whatever vestiges of the common wheal is left will be sacrificed to justify it.
The political class we have have learnt nothing, nada. Maybe we need to find a way to get this over to them next time.
The trouble is the reform Wat Tyler was campaigning for (abolition to the Poll Tax) never happened and he was beheaded. As ever. Except that we don’t actually behead anyone theses days.
Threatening to make them a non person by confiscating all their electronic devices and cutting off their bank accounts is as effective.
I’m sure the results of more financial DEregulation will trickle down to my neighborhood even more effectively than the results of the last major City deregulation did, for 17 years to date, after the global financial crash of 2008.
They’ve been marching in the streets round here,
WHADDOOWEWANT?
CITY DEREGULATION!
WHENDOWEWANNIT?
NOW!!!!!!
(not)
I keep thinking Reeves has surely plumbed the depths of economic stupidity/ignorance/arrogance (you choose).
But she just keeps on drilling…
When she makes her Mansion House speech, who will have paid for her outfit? Will Starmer be wearing his own specs?
They won’t be eating austerity pie, you can be sure, that’s being saved for we serfs to eat later.
🙂
In anticipation of the forthcoming crash, should we be buying gold, or did the price already shoot up after RR opened her mouth?
Safety might pay
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/15/rachel-reeves-rules-red-tape-boot-on-neck-innovation-mansion-house
She’s going to review the post 2008 “ringfencing” rules (separating commercial and investment banking)
and..
allow riskier mortgage lending above the 4.5x income limit
I’ve made up my mind – it’s definitely either stupidity or (being charitable) gross economic ignorance that drives her economic policy.
Ive also worked out a new economic indicator for when to buy gold- it’s called the CTIP index (Chancellor’s Tears In Public index).
At the slightest public display of emotion by thr Chancellor..
OR
Any inappropriate wearing of sunglasses..
– buy the shiny yellow stuff!
I wonder when the property developers will be successful in lobbying her for the removal of all that restrictive regulation about flammable external cladding on tower blocks? It may be saving hundreds or thousands of lives in years to come, but – growth, growth, growth.
According to Copilot AI: “The term “trickle-down economics” originated as a critical or satirical label for economic policies that favor the wealthy, under the assumption that benefits will eventually “trickle down” to everyone else.
“1930s – Will Rogers: The phrase is often attributed to American humorist Will Rogers, who reportedly said during the Great Depression that money was being given to the rich in the hope that it would trickle down to the poor.”
There is no evidence that trickle down economics works, and the last 40 years since Thatcher demonstrates that it is a complete failure that only benefits the wealthy.
This is all more evidence that our politicians have been bought.
I just don’t understand why Reeves joined the Labour party in the first place. Given her obvious policy preferences surely the Conservatives were a better match for her!
Re Conservative – I met RR once at a Labour social event when I lived in Leeds West.
My immediate, instinctive assessment was that she was Tory through and through.
Purely subjective and just my instant gut instinct.
Nothing since has caused me to question that.
Thank you, both.
In the late noughties, I spoke to someone who been at Oxford alongside with some then and still in politics.
He thought that the likes of Reeves would have wanted to join the Tories, but the Cameron types dominated and would not have allowed them to prosper. This goes back to Blair.
I mean even if “trickle down” works, which it clearly doesn’t, it doesn’t sound very impressive. We need it to gush down.
In arguments with others on the reality of ‘trickle down’ I tend to use the IMF Gini coefficient.
1979 – 25%, 1989 – 35%, 2007 – 38%, 2020 – 34% (source IMF). Now what happened in 1979 I wonder? What phenomena could have caused a rise in inequality of approaching 50%? And why has inequality only ever shown moderate (temporary) easing in the intervening period?
Would I be wrong to suggest neoliberal ideology as the prime suspect?
I’m told by a friend who subscribes to the New Statesman that there’s a grouping within the Labour Party that goes by the term “blue Labour”. Mc Sweeney is a prominent member, as I assume are Starmer, Reeves, etc.
As I’ve said to my friend, and once before in a comment on this blog, NOBODY who chooses to associate themselves with such a label – whether it’s formal or not – should be considered a member of what most everyone in the UK would consider the Labour Party. Given the history of the Labour Party and the fundamental association of our (and most) political parties with a colour (in the case of Labour, red), the choice of blue – whether symbolic, as a convenient “label”, or otherwise – should be enough to indicate that anyone who does is in fact a Tory.
Consequently, if it’s true – as seems to be the case beyond reasonable doubt – that this faction is dominant within the Labour Party/Government, then the people of the UK need to be aware that we DO NOT have a Labour government – except in name. We have the Tory Party in disguise. Or, as has often been said on this blog, a continuity party for operating for and controlled by exactly the same interests (money/the rich) that have sought to control government and politics in the UK for decades. The difference now being that they succeeded in doing that after 2008 and now have no intention of giving up that control.
In short, we have a hegemonic system of government and politics in the UK that every authoritarian regime in the world would give its (extreme) right arm for – but without “the authoritarians” having had to face any backlash whatsoever (apart from having to allow the odd bits of “progressive” legislation to keep the vocal lefties happy – which it did more effectively than “they” ever imagined.
What was that quaint old phrase I used to see around the place? ‘If voting changed anything they’d abolish it.’
Perhaps we need to rephrase that for 21st century UK. ‘As voting changes nothing we’d encourage it.’
The group is lead by the ghastly Lord Glasman.
Apparently Lord Glasman (just looked him up) attended Trump’s inauguration – along with Truss and Patel. Says it all!
Why is Lord Glasman attending the inauguration?
According to The Spectator, Lord Glasman is the only figure from the Labour Party to receive an invitation to Inauguration Day from Mr Trump’s team.
Speaking on Times Radio last week, Lord Glasman said that “there’s a huge energy and a sense of almost resurrection, restoration, you know they want to make America great again” among America’s working-class communities as they prepare for Mr Trump to become President again
Richard.
A timely piece of news, given Rachel from Accounts will be speaking to those paragons of virtue in the City about now, and this news is very much in keeping with the Reeve’s belief in the ills of regulation.
The Moscow Higher School of Economics has just launched a Masters Degree in ‘How to Circumvent Sanctions.’ That’s true red tape busting for you! Perhaps Starmer and Reeves would like to invite the originators of this groundbreaking degree over for a chat. If so, the full details are here:
https://bsky.app/profile/prune602.bsky.social/post/3ltzdumcvnc27
🙂
Hayek must be bouncing with joy as Reeves lives her best life as Labour’s answer to Thatcher.
I’m experiencing deja vu all over again. It’s back to the 1980s with financial deregulation, high loan to value mortgages, growth fetishised… And look how well that ended!
Agreed
I see Rachel is again going on about getting more people to put their savings in to stocks and shares ‘to boost the economy’. Does she really believe we are all dumb enough to believe buying, what would be mostly second hand shares, does anything for the real economy? Or is she wanting to use the line the Tories used for so long that a booming stock market reflects a booming economy? That may have been true in the dim and distant past but in recent decades the two have become disconnected.
She is dumb enough not to even know that
I can’t claim any special insight about Reeves or her party. I do admit to Labour sympathies.
I remember a Chinese businessman saying some years ago in an interview that in China you can’t change the party but you can change the policy. He said this was in contrast with the West where you can change the party but not the policy.
Only a major rupture now between neoliberalism and reality can cause a change in the odious grip this economic/political orthodoxy has along with its supporters.
Once enough people have lost everything and stop believing in the nonsense they are fed by politicians and MSM will the deep change come.
Hopefully this change will be largely peaceful and in the right direction my fear is that it will be nothing of the kind.
I’ve come to the conclusion the left is finished in this country and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Can that be done quickly enough?
Can’t the rebuild of the left be done quickly?
UKIP/Reform illustrates even with donors/media oxygen it’s a rocky road even for the conservative right.
However they have shown in 15 years a great deal can be done.
My hope and faith is in the young. I saw glimpses of their abilities when Corbyn was still leader.
They need a new intellectually talented, politically competent, media savvy, leadership team.
Maybe a new Yul Brynner can turn up and assemble a magnificent 7!
“Peace and justice Project” have just emailed me with a “Consultation on building a new left party”.
The consultation closes at the end of the month. I’ll have a go at it before then.
I can’t make up my mind whether it is genuine or “placatory”. It mentions Jeremy Corbyn but not Zara Sultana.
If you want to sign up and do the survey, see here:
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/pjp-consultation?clear_id=true&source=email-join-our-next-supporters-zoom-call-3
It seems to be an activist recruitment exercise rather than a real consultation.