It is entirely realistic to say that Rachel Reeves is playing to three audiences as she delivers her Budget today.
One is the City of London, including bankers and other financiers, as well as quoted companies whose shares are traded there.
The second is her backbench MPs.
The third is the rest of us in the electorate.
Labour loves to triangulate. Ever since the days of Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, this has been their chosen methodology for remaining in power, except that they long ago lost the dark art that made it effective. These three audiences are the power bases between which they must now triangulate.
Her priorities with regard to each group are readily apparent.
Reeves has clearly chosen to keep the bankers and the City on side, meaning she will avoid any taxes on wealth or banks, and keep changes to regulation and other measures as low as possible so that they remain supportive. She has, in fact, already sent out appeals to bankers for their support for her budget, given that she has left them alone. In doing so, she has already made clear that the City is her number one target audience today, as is obvious to everyone.
Most Labour MPs will broadly go along with this, although why is harder to explain. But unless this budget unravels in a way even worse than its disastrous run-up suggests is possible, I suspect that enough of them will be relieved that things are just dire and not truly terrible, and she will get away with their continued support until next May, when Labour's electoral disaster breaks.
That brings me to her third audience, and the evidence here is already clear. Almost nothing that Reeves can do today will in any way appease the misgivings that the vast majority of the UK electorate now have about her, the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, and the government he leads. She might pull some stunning feat out of the hat today that will totally change the whole view of who she is, what she is capable of, and how our fortunes will change with her. But the likelihood of this happening is close to zero.
As a consequence, today will go down in history as the day when the Labour Party really began to die. My suspicion is that there will be no way forward for Labour after this. Its 125 years of history will be over, and by 2029 (if it lasts that long) its electoral prospects will be even worse than they were in 1931, which was its previous nadir.
I would love to say I am sorry, but the truth is, after much of a lifetime of being disappointed by Labour, I am not. Labour no longer answers any question this country has. It is time to move on. The only question is, to where?
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No steer, Rachel, plus the genius are not interested in the non elite 95% of the UK population. They have no plan to improve this group because it is not worthy of their consideration.
Expect the out pouring of claptrap from Rachel to substantially improve the electoral chances of deform.
No steer from day one is proving to be the longest political suicide note in history.
Electoral oblivion for no steer looms.
I’m expecting a bone to be thrown to the populace or a small handful of crumbs; just whatever’s left after the City has been satisfied.
”It is time to move on. The only question is, to where?”
Very many former Labour supporters have asked themselves that question over the last few years. It seems that, with a party membership now topping 175,000, the Green Party is the destination of choice. I just hope the GP doesn’t get hijacked by ex-Labour factionalists and economic dumbos who may undermine the very positive direction that Zack is pointing them in.
You mean James Meadway?
Yes.
Naughty.
You well know that unless economics views everything through the lens of “class” it must be wrong & natch Mr Meadway must be right, like the pope, he is infallible.
Is it me or do I detect large-scale ship jumping?
The Marxists are turning Green, and bringing their baggage with them.
……..James Meadway is clearly a fan of Zack Polanski pushing a left-wing agenda:
https://novaramedia.com/2025/09/03/zack-polanskis-win-is-the-kick-up-the-arse-the-left-needs/
But he won’t like Zack saying things that sound like MMT, for example, in the Channel 4 interview you highlighted yesterday:
https://mmt101.substack.com/p/mmt-is-intellectual-toxic-sludge
Hopefully both Zack and James will read and absorb your glossary update on MMT from this morning!
I’m pleased Zack P has attracted such support for the Green Party. But put it in context: their membership is still a lot less than Labour under Corbyn, and even Your Party seems remarkably popular despite its pro-tem leaders’ best efforts to crash it.
What you say is true.
But how did they get there?
Looking back at the Labour Right, it is quite clear that people like Crosland and others simply decided to worship markets and capitalism, rather than follow the words of Jesus, a prophet who was executed for telling the truth anyway (so that Christianity can go on but Jesus’s messaging can be ignored and replaced).
They have followed an avowed materialistic footpath that has lacked any spiritual nuance and led them to see the individual as the centre of everything, and money to be an indicator human progress.
This to me at least is Labour’s fundamental ideological failure.
I’m not sure the rest of us in the elctorate are even a factor in the uni-party’s thinking.
On a related note this was flagged in Links on the excellent Naked Capitalism site yesterday: https://www.americasundoing.com/p/it-works-if-you-work-it and though US centric it applies equally (if not more so) to the UK and wider western neoliberal world. It shows the real world effect of the financialisation of everyday life which started under Thatcher and Reagan and has accelerated out of control since the GFC in 2008. For me it hits the nail on the head of why people are so angry and why they are flailing around for alternatives (Trump, Farage) even if those alternatives are no more than snake oil (as noted by the author of the piece).
Maybe Labour is indeed dying – and started rotting from within when the potentially illegal take over by the Labour Together conspiracy to get rid of the antisemites and engineered the triumph of the McSweeney Starmer faction.
There seems to be very little democracy left in labour – the local parties and wider membership seem disenfranchised.
But what is a political party? – is there no minimal democratic structure to be registered as a party? Reform seems to be a company with one man rule.
My instinct was to get all Labours members back and re-take it. If it did die what is to stop any other party – the Greens or the Other Party – being factionalised in the same way as Labour.
The Greens may offer hope in England and Wales but they don’t in Scotland. Where I live, in Dumfries & Galloway, I really do fear that Reform will romp home, powered by disillusioned Tories. My only hope is that the SNP can do better at getting what should be their key messages – stress the plusses, like free prescriptions and University education, and explain the plusses of independence, without actually insulting those who need converting.
You are right in Dumfries and Galloway – one of the very few seats Reform might take in Scotland. It’s some time since I have been your way, and I loved it when I did. So, why is that? Are yuo the Pembrokeshire of Scotland?
In relation to the geography of the area, probably. Both very beautiful areas possibly under appreciated by the tourist trade. In terms of the politics, I don’t really know Pembrokeshire very well but, in D & G, there is a very large, retired, English population. I suspect that most of them are natural Conservatives so, allied with the agricultural community, that’s where the vote goes. I am one of those retired English, by the way, but definitely not a Tory voter. Until recently, I contributed positively to the local economy by running a small coach company. I now contribute, at 78, by volunteering with Blood Bikes and the Firefighters Charity.
Pembrokeshire also has a very large, retired, English population. I suspect that most of them are natural Conservatives as well.
I agree with Mike Harris, the Scottish Green Party don’t offer anything, and are a totally different animal to the Green Party in England and Wales.
Without much enthusiasm, my current position is to vote SNP again, though I feel they are only interested in perpetual devolution. I cannot understand the difficulty the SNP has in embracing MMT and a Scottish currency/government central bank on day one of independence. Those seem to me to be an excellent argument in favour of independence, but maybe it doesn’t sit well with an uninformed electorate, or something. This is why I feel the SNP shall remain devolutionists at heart.
So backwards we go, within the U.K., governed by the STP in the current guise of not-at-all-interested-in-Labour government.
Across decades and party lines, Britain keeps repeating the same patterns, not because politicians share an ideology, but because they inherit the same political machinery and national story. The days of Empire still haunt us. The Westminster system centralises power in London, rewards short-term moves over long-term investment, and leaves regions dependent on decisions made far from local realities. Even when governments change, the incentives stay the same.
Key institutions – the civil service, diplomatic corps, armed forces and financial sector – still operate with an instinctive sense of global role and status. That doesn’t mean today’s leaders are imperialists, but it does mean they often overestimate the UK’s weight and underestimate the need to rebuild the domestic economy.
The economic model reinforces this. For forty years Britain has relied on finance, foreign capital and London-led growth. It generates quick revenue but leaves the country exposed, unequal and slow to adapt. No party has fundamentally challenged it.
Politically, invoking national exceptionalism is easier than admitting decline or backing long-term reform.
The persistence of these habits across parties shows the issue is structural: without deep reform, Britain’s drift will continue whoever is in power.
Just a follow-up on the lingering days of Empire, perhaps for Christmas Quiz purposes, here’s a list of the 14 – yes 14 – British Overseas Territories still remaining today:
Anguilla
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Cayman Islands
Falkland Islands
Gibraltar
Montserrat
Pitcairn Islands
St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha
Turks and Caicos Islands
British Antarctic Territory
British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT)
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
Akrotiri and Dhekelia (UK Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus)
Territories still use British governors, commissioners or administrators, British courts of final appeal, and in many cases the British military for protection.
Sorry this doesn’t have anything to do with today’s budget. Or does it….?