The Observer editorial says Labour cannot deliver without changing its fiscal rules:
In the paper, Bill Keegan joins the theme:
Reeves can ignore blogs like this one saying that she is getting her economics wrong. It's harder when the Sunday paper of Labour choice joins in the chorus of those saying she is getting her whole approach wrong.
But will she listen? Or does she, like the dogmatists who have preceded her in post, believe she knows better than everyone because she's delivering what was taught on her Oxford PPE?
My suspicion is she will not be for changing.
I also suspect she will not be Chancellor for more than two years as a result. Starmer will be panicking by then as everything falls apart around him, and her time will be up.
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As equally important is the question “What happened to the “democratic” socialism in the Labour Party that members put up with a continuation of Tory austerity policy?” Is it now a mandatory criterion to be a member of this party you should also be a wimp? It would seem so! Either that or they have no ability to understand why the Tory austerity policy was disastrous for the country in which case what are they doing in politics!
Potentially self-serving, I’d think. I find myself wondering, as do others, if Reeves isn’t guiding us towards another crash and then a bail-in.
What happened to ‘democratic’ socialism? look at graph 3
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg3j131327yo
She is owned (& has been formed) by those controlling her to accept a set of beliefs regarding economics. Nothing will change that. She is thus no different from all preceding UK finance minister who since 1979 have fully bought into neo-libtardism. Will she be booted or Starmer? (ref comments by other people) – who knows. The only certainty is a UK that continues on its downward spiral, with those responsible functionally incapable of chaging (cos the cognitive dissonance is turned up to full blast).
As I have remarked previsouly, it is a pity that Reeves is not subjected to a forensic interview – we would probably discover that with respect to economics she has all the coherence of Trussed, Trump, Johnson, May, Gidiot etc. The UK is run by indoctrinated imbeciles/trained parrots.
Back in 2012 Philip Pilkington wrote three articles about Margaret Thatcher in connection with her policy of Monetarism revealing not only how economically and monetarily illiterate she was but also a liar who denied after her policy failed that she’d ever been a Monetarist! Is history is about to repeat itself with Starmer and Reeves I think we can say it looks very much like it. Certainly we can learn from Pilington’s articles not to put politicians on pedestals because the likelihood is that they very much have their feet stuck in clay!
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/philip-pilkington-the-new-monetarism-part-i-the-british-experience.html#q0c4kTIOLh5YXa7e.99
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/philip-pilkington-the-new-monetarism-part-ii-holes-in-the-theory.html
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/philip-pilkington-the-new-monetarism-part-iii-critique-of-economic-reason.html
Thanks
Did you catch the ‘conversation’ between Kamala Harris & Tim Walz? A short but wide ranging discussion which encompassed food, music and family backgrounds, but also touched on values and compassion – take care of your neighbours and the vulnerable. Not once did they mention Trump or the difficulties they may face, but it was positive and uplifting. I just cannot envisage anything similar between Starmer, Reeves & Streeting; can you imagine them not highlighting the failures of the Tories as being the reason why they can achieve so little.
I’m reminded of the Biblical thought that without a vision the people perish. It seems that is exactly where we find ourselves, and in the case of the winter fuel allowance or 2 child family benefit it may literally be the case. So yes, I can only hope that Reeves goes, and the sooner the better. But with the current Labour leadership I don’t hold out much hope for a brighter outlook anytime soon.
As long as 2 years?
The Holyrood election is in May, 2026. I wonder how much more damage she, and Starmer, will have wrought by then and what effect it will have on the Scottish electorate.
“I also suspect she will not be Chancellor for more than two years as a result.”
Does not the Chancellor have to execute the policy of the Prime Minister???
If I am correct, the problem is not Rachel Reeves but Keir Starmer. Therefore, what will “getting rid” of Rachel Reeves accomplish if Starmer remains the Captain and does not reverse the course he is sailing his ship????
Starmer appears to know nothing of economics and relies heavily on her. If she fails him what we know is that he is ruthless.
Thanks for the clarification.
If Starmer leaves it that long, can I suggest others will be after his job. I don’t see it as a given that he will complete his 5 years in office.
Labour MP’s have had 14 years to figure out what was was wrong with the Tory austerity policy. Starmer won’t face a challenge because he’s surrounded by shills.
I understood it when during the election campaign, Labour had an eye on the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press and were careful not to propose anything that might be distorted and used as headlines to derail the campaign.
But now they are in government Reeves and Starmer should be governing for the whole country, not just the vested interests behind the Daily Mail et al. They should be taking note of the Observer and the few other media commentators not in thrall to rich rightwingers, and taking seriously the thoughts of the more intelligent bloggers.
@ Jonathan
They said how they were going to play and that’s how they are playing. Anybody expecting something different had no basis for their expectations other than blind optimism.
I saw this this morning myself.
If the Reeve-cividist continues to just treat the money she has as all the money she has, all she is going to do is upset and alienate the voters Laboured will need at the next election by making ‘tough choices’. Tough on whom? Well, her and Stymied had been be talking because Mr No Charisma will be not picking up the tab for that as you say.
She needs more money. And she can get it from HER bank and she does not have to pay it back because it is what that extra money will do that will deliver the payback that even Keegan realises.
BTW:-
Starmer = ‘Stymied’ – because he has accepted the Neo-liberal/Farage view and has stopped being an independent Labour leader.
Reeves = ‘Reeve-cividist’ – because she is going to make the same mistakes as Gordon Brown – New PFI and trusting the banks with the ranch.
Labour = ‘Laboured’ = because the party makes doing the right thing nigh impossible to not at all.
Yes, I think Reeves rock-solid commitment to the orthodoxy of the last 40+ years will make Starmer panic and replace her in the medium term (presumably because of that she will have to be replaced with someone to the left of her and more Keynesian??).
Phil Burton-Cartledge (who’s blog is very well worth reading) has a very sharp and incisive take on Labour’s emerging policy on universities – in other words: ‘stick to Tory policies and see what happens’:
https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2024/08/why-does-labour-hate-universities.html
I like that blog
On the other hand there is Mairi Spowage, Director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, a theoretician and statistician who seems to believe that the Pandemic and Government borrowing explains the current problems in a BBC Radio Scotland News. She could fairly be described as an insider (civil service – fast tracked in 2005 at Holyrood under Labour-LibDem); and said this to ‘The National’ in December, 2020 “Forecasting is a very difficult business …. There’s the old adage that they’re all wrong, but some of them are useful. It’s very difficult to predict what’s going to happen.” It isn’t difficult for economists to “predict”; they have insufficient science to make predictions; and as she acknowledges their forecasts are usually wrong; whether they are even sufficiently reliable to be useful, she has still to prove.
BBC Scotland News, I might add asked the Scottish Business Secretary “Isn’t there an argument for saying that public spending is too high in Scotland”, and reeled off some stats; this was a prepared question. The same old ignorance and politically driven agenda we have heard for fourteen years; and in the very middle of the catastrophe of fourteen years of imbecilic Austerity as the solution that keeps on failing; the BBC wants to repeat it again. Notice, this is no coming from the Opposition (which scarcely dares to show its face); it is coming straight from the BBC, day, after day, after day. The astonishing thing is how lame the SNP Ministers are in response; with Mairi Spowage and Shona Robison setting the pace, it is difficult to see any way out of this mess. This is what inertia looks like; close up. Earnest floundering, neither candid nor robust.
The Fraser of Allender is far from an objective commentator on almost anything, in my opinion, but it claims to be.
Scotland is becoming catatonic. Nobody is standing up to defend it from the political and budgetary abuse to which it is subject. Its politicians and economists are made of intellectually soft, malleable plasticine; desperate to defend the orthodox and long accepted abuse.
BBC Scotland was not finished with the political bias in questioning Shona Robison. Robison was confronted by the critical challenge by the BBC News interviewer beginning “there is an argument….” (whose argument?). Later, the interviewer wheeled out the Labour spokesman Daniel Johnson MSP, but the offer of a critical challenge on policy requiring answer, on the same budgetary issue was begun in this way “What do you make of what Shons Robison says”; an easy, soft-ball question, emphasising the political Party controversy, allowing the respondent to indulge in an attack on the SNP as a balanced response. The underlying issue, the precarious nature of the Scottish Budget, given a doubling down of Austerity, is lost. This is how the BBC operates. It is utterly cynical.
Incidentally, Johnson offered a defence of Labour that descended to comic absurdity. The SNP, he claimed had nearly twenty years to prepare for this. Labour have been in Government for a couple of weeks and are suddenly coping with the scale (presumably unknown!?) of the Conservative Government’s disastrous mismanagement.
No, Mr Johnson; Labour knew exactly what they would face. They have been out of office for fourteen years, with no responsibility at all – except to prepare themselves for this moment. And they didn’t. They pretended it was a surprise. It wan’t a surprise to the public; it wasn’t to the IFS; it wasn’t to anyone. Does he think we are all stupid? And if he thinks the Rachel Reeves Plan is the answer, he is a fool. More, and greater austerity spells more ruin.
Have the SNP made mistakes? Absolutely. But unlike Labour – all talk, guff and ignorance; they have had to govern on a fixed Budget for fourteen years, while Austerity was allowed to destroy the UK finances, and in the middle of an avalanche of irresponsible, spendthrift incompetence in Westminster, mitigate as best they may, with nickel and dimes, to mitigate the unmitigatable to protect ordinary people.
Much to agree with
It was a truly dreadul interview.
In this case the interviewer clearly took the line that public spending was bad in principle.
Fraser of Allander are given the preferential “independent” commentator role as the IFS are down south, whereas I have never encountered any commentary of theirs that was not down the line unionist neoliberal, so unquestioning of the conventional wisdom.
Johnson eventually ended up just repeating his disinformation about medium term planning and anticipation of cuts. He had clearly been briefed pre-interview but is not intelligent enough to go beyond that narrow propaganda approach. No better than any WM Tory, and of the same level of ability as DRoss.
He had no answer to the WM government bypassing Scotgov on devolved issues with the proposed “anti-poverty” (aye, right) UK wide measures to reduce the grant in aid settlement – and which is just as designed to undermine Holyrood as the Tories attitudes since 2019. There was no challenge to this obvious stance.
Meanwhile, the SNP are still in self destruct mode with the arguments over their attitude to Israel with John Mason and Angus Robertson both taking a soft line over the Gaza genocide, whilst Brendan O’Hara (my MP) is busy stirring the pot for Swinney from WM, as he usually does.
More internal blood letting is inevitable. We are as just “Led by Donkeys” as the English.
This means the very soft targets of Labour’s macroeconomic policies plus their attitude to Holyrood and the “no austerity” promise Sarwar has made are being ignored.
Shona Robison, (not exactly a high flyer in the SNP, but who really does mean well) needs all the firepower she can muster from her colleagues, but seems a lone voice.
My advice to the SNP is to put together a simple coherent PR case against the WM government on economic policy, and run an orchestrated campaign to spell out what austerity really means to Scotland under Reeves.
Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, and give Anas a really hard time over his lie of ‘no more austerity’. He is very much a weak link.
Reeves is still wide open to the pensioner winter fuel payment being Austerity v2.0 policy #1 argument.
Scottish pensioners will suffer additionally through our climate being colder, with longer and darker winters, plus our electricity being higher priced per KwHr as unit price weighting is biassed to the SE, needs to be hammered.
We are being disproportionately punished.
I like your analysis
So do I; but since Abstracts are all the rage now; here it is:
Most politicians are duds. They are elected (but chosen by Parties that are short of both insight and talent); but they do not understand how anything works, and all seem to have had an imagination bypass operation, or are astonishingly inarticulate, outside their badly written scripts.
Oops, too long.
Too many politicians are not capable of handling the problem government. They are almost invariably chosen by a Political Party, and that is the real problem.
🙂
Some may be interested in this from The Scotsman:
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/snp-scottish-government-scotwind-renewables-manufacturing-4746518?utm_campaign=scot-news-api&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_sSjMdDw2BjHSYKYArWRHhLRHFUbuEi7DmI22fwIdyZz1gd8uj4p1r7sVnk9CVUtDbwXV9qFt6MlCoTgqWtbcT2Vy3eA&_hsmi=320650911&utm_content=320650911&utm_source=hs_email
I posted this on another thread but I think it belongs here in a discussion of Fraser of Allander and Scottish economics.
The problem here is resources. It appears the £750m+ from the sea-bed licences is being drained into shoring up the Scottish budget problems. It isn’t great, the Scottish government have not been adroit, but it is strapped by the Devolution settlement. Labour is making much of GB Energy solving the problem, but the quantum is not clear, nor timing; not anything of substance. So far, just rhetoric is being offered.
The £16Bn is only part of the story, and of the opportunity. What the critics like the Scotsman are deliberately leaving out of the equation is that energy policy in most respects is reserved (including tax policy – inducement or payment); and the scale of the issue is, frankly (if anyone actually thought about it outside toxic political terms), far beyond the capacity of devolved Government budgets; the Scottish Budget is just under £60Bn, only around 5% of total UK Government expenditure. It has very little borrowing power. Handling the enabling of a £16Bn+ investment project within the devolution envelope is even more difficult in the current Reeves austerity crisis. This needs resources to which Scotland does not have access given the devolution settlement; which has now become a Unionist free-for-all Holyrood and SNP bashing exercise.
This issue is being grotesquely politicised and is going down the same road as the 1970s-80s Oil boom. Scotland was screwed by Westminster and the City then (see McCrone Report); and it will inevitably be screwed again. And the electorate keep voting to be cleaned out. They never learn. Anything.
You explain it to me.
Well said
A bit off the point for which i apologise. But yesterday I suggested that there was probably dissension behind the scenes at the higher levels of state over Gaza. It is clear that this is not a junior official.
The writer is an expert of arms sales policy and he says there is no justification for continuing arms sales to Israel.
https://x.com/HindHassanNews/status/1824509627796439188
From a quick google only the National Scot has reported it.
I will post it
Thanks Mr Stevenson. BBC News reports it, but not (yet?) Sky News. Couldn’t find much on Mark Smith from a quick Google, so not sure how ‘senior’ a diplomat; but it seems an expert one.
On reading the reports, I can only say not wholly surprised; nevertheless, given the starkness of the statement, and given the diplomatic source – my jaw dropped. He has thrown himself under the bus; whistleblowing is almost invariably a ‘no win’ personal strategy. That takes courage.
I expect the spaghetti to hit the fan (polite version of what will follow this. Truth will be the first casualty).
I suspect he knew his civil service career was over. But good for him. The bbc has now caught up with it, but only peripherally.
Foreign Office official resigns over Israel arms sales (18 Aug 2024) BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyvpm1049d9o
British diplomat resigns over claims UK ‘may be complicit in war crimes’ with Israel arms sales (18 Aug 2024) Sky
https://news.sky.com/story/british-diplomat-resigns-over-claims-uk-may-be-complicit-in-war-crimes-with-israel-arms-sales-13199323
Foreign Office official quits over UK refusal to ban arms exports to Israel (18 Aug 2024) The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/18/foreign-office-official-quits-over-uk-refusal-to-ban-arms-exports-to-israel
Senior British diplomat quits in protest against UK’s arms sales to Israel (18 Aug 2024) PressTV
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/08/17/731520/UK-Mark-Smith-arms-sales-Israel-war-Gaza-Foreign-Office
Thanks
Appreciated
….but our Prime Minister is a declared Zionist.
Shakes head in disbelief that this man is electable.
Reeves (and Starmer and the rest of the fronbench) are now in a no-win position. They can’t win if they do as they said and their credibility will be destroyed if they u-turn. I agree they will most likely stick to plan A (a = austerity).
I hoped…. and still hope that the austerity that was pitched during the election campaign will be ditched. To some degree, it has with respect to public sector pay.
In my first job (box stacker and tea maker) my boss said “never believe your own bullshit”…. I fear Rachel Reeves was never given that essential advice….. and, as a consequence, will have to go after a suitable period.
Your first boss was no fool.
I think she is changing her stance, albeit quietly. So far we have potential pay agreements for the Junior doctors and the train drivers. I think these are improved offers, so more money will be needed. And yet, no-one has been screaming “how are you going to pay for it?”
Everyone knows the media are complicit in everything the government does, and clearly a decision has been made to keep quiet about this.
I would suggest there will be more of this, unreported by the media, only being exposed by yourself, Richard, and others.
The image presented to the general population will be the same thus maintaining the lie about how the economy functions
It is reported that Reeves has stated that 65% of the public sector settlements will be met from new funding, but 35% must come from departmental budgets, so classic austerity.
Agreed
I think the media have decided “who will pay for it”. Look at the front pages of today’s Sunday Express and Mail on Sunday.
As I am spending much of today in bed as my ear infection has now given me vertigo I am not sure whether I will get to do that.
Sunday Express front page (Sun 18 Aug 2024) “HOW MANY OAPs WILL FREEZE THIS WINTER?”
Mail on Sunday front page (Sun 18 Aug 2024) “£14bn BILL FOR KEIR’S SHABBY UNION CAVE-IN”
Images: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn02ggq8dpdo
How long Reeves (or indeed LINO) stays in post will depend on unknowables outside her control, and probably outside this country. Silly and impossible fiscal rules aren’t necessarily a problem. Like diet and exercise regimes, they’re there to be broken. Reeves doomed herself before the election with public declarations of “iron-clad”, “non-negotiable”, “without exception” etc. She’s damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t, stick to them, and has limited choice in the matter anyway.
What will remain is the damage done by reinforcing the popular misconception that net (“deficit”) public spending is inherently bad.
There have been suggestions that Starmer is an ‘admirer’ of M Mazzucato – and that they have communicated from time to time.
That could be the only glimmer of hope – but the hope is probably pretty folorn.
As people on here say – @BBC is doing the oppositions job – in keep the Nine Eighty Four Ignorance is Strength narrative going – ‘there is no money’.
BBC will never mount a discussion to explore why limiting public spending for 14 years in order to ‘save money’ and ‘promote growth’ has wrecked public services, kept real incomes stagnant/reduced, and the economy also stagnant, and whether this suggests more of the s ame is the onlypossible c option.
I think there is some cherry picking of her ideas going on
Hmmm…………….
Sorry to hear that you ear infection is having some knock an effects so please forgive my late intrusion and reflection.
I disagree with Mr Warren really about his view about political parties and politicians. I am coming around to not seeing them as duds or stupid or lacking imagination or ability.
I just happen to think that they do have those attributes but choose to use them to benefit themselves.
A colleague of mine went so far as to meet none other than Robert Jenrick to interview him about social value for a post grad course she was on. She found most convincingly that he knew all about it as well as anyone who was from the Left and that his public persona was nothing like how he came across in the media. In the end, she just ended up thinking that politics was all theatre, nothing else.
So what is my point? We have a party political system that is too privately funded. As a result, what we have is intelligent well educated but badly principled people who have no intention of listening to voters or doing the right thing because they have been bought and are doing things that benefit those who have funded them and whom in return, will receive some benefit from that.
Money talks.
That my friends is why we have the politics and the politicians that we have. These people are not stupid but even worse, they’re hyper-individualised.
If anything, they are anti-social, using the apparatus of social benefit, for personal benefit. That to me is a modern politician. They know what they are doing and do it consciously.
Hyper individualisation was always the neoliberal goal
Exactly – that is the ‘mens rea’ element in modern politics emboldened by financial corruption – basically our modern politicians tend to deliberately and consciously NOT DO what the many want in order to fulfill the objectives of the source of their corruption – their funders.
This is how we got American politics in my view – doing rather well here too from what I can see.
Perversely, it is the Public Choice ‘theorists’ who identified the true relationship between the people and their ‘bureaucrats’. Bureaucrats in an egalitarian setting sound to me to be more willing to listen and learn from the ‘people’ and distribute the means and sustenance of a ‘decent life’ more widely . Public Choice proponents sneer at this whilst encouraging only markets and money making profit to make their customers’ dreams come true.
Libertarian-ism and Neo-liberalism is full of hypocrisy and inconsistencies that stick out a mile to any normal human being.
Ah, and here I was, looking at the bright side; just as they present themselves.
What we might be seeing right here, right now is the latest iteration in the long battle human society has had between authoritarian/hierarchy and egalitarian modes of living.
David Graeber and David Wengrow’s ‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’ (2021) pp. 304-345 highlights new archaeological discoveries in places such as the Ukraine, Turkey, China and Mexico where ancient urban forms reveal large settlements of living quarters with always a ‘palace’ or more exclusive quarters situated on the periphery.
There is a suggestion that such palaces represent some sort of authoritarian counter-culture to the more egalitarian, self-organising common living quarters of early cities. Furthermore the digs in the palaces reveal armories and stores not found elsewhere. Digs also reveal periods of violence – mass executions and sacrifices during authoritarian times and then what seems like retributions followed with periods of economic growth of the cities represented by expansion of the settlement and building on top of older buildings. A growth of the ‘aristocratic’ class seems accompanied by mass violence and then at the end to that period, again with violence, from the other side.
During periods of aristocratic growth, self organising bureaucracy ‘disappears’, only to reappear again.
So my take on that is that the history of humanity portrayed in this book leans firmly on a natural tendency for humans towards egalitarianism with aristocracies coming out as ‘reactionary’ to modern eyes – disruptors of societies?
So there seems to be two consistent lineages in human history to my eyes – one that favours egalitarianism, the other aristocratic, monarchistic, authoritarian.
So really, what has changed over history? In our history – what we are living now – we seem to be in another epoch ruled by the monarchical, aristocratic ‘counter culture’ forms that will rise (and fall) over human time. Our society at this time is just the latest group of people to suffer one of these hyper-individualised epochs dominated by the the few.
Except that now, instead of swords and spears in the palace, the main weapon is money – money power. And within that are the seeds of its own destruction. It is fascinating stuff, but it does give one the impression that humans are prisoners to history.
Reeves is no different to any other Labour Chancellor in that they have all sought to operate within the narrow confines of the capitalist system. This straitjacket virtually condemns them to failure. Even with a different approach it is fanciful to expect any fundamental differences in terms of outcome. Reeves will follow the bidding of the capitalist class and it’s echoes in the media/academia in order to defend the capitalist system never giving a second thought to the economic damage, human suffering and deaths caused by the austerity policies which will increase the historic levels of social and economic inequality to ever greater levels. The policies pursued by starmer and reeves are preparing the ground for the reemergence of fascism unless the Labour movement and other sections of society fight back. It doesn’t have to be this way. We all face a choice either do nothing or try to prevent the Labour government from attacking the working and middle classes all so that the super rich can get even wealthier and powerful. The clock is ticking what are you going to do?
@ Lee Lawson
As the clock ticks I shall be getting on with civilising my allotment. Then when the opportunity arises I will vote.
What will you be doing? indeed what do you think I should be doing?
You don’t pose a relevant question the exceptional growth of China because it reverted to market capitalism and the collapse of Soviet Union communism because it didn’t adequately do so should tell you so. The perennial question which lies before human beings (indeed most living creatures) is how do you stop individuals with special expertise or enhanced capabilities from using these to exploit others.
Hi Richard, I’m sorry to learn of your vertigo. I have had two severe attacks in the last three years – very disturbing, but in my case solved quickly and easily by home implementation of the so-called “Epley Manoeuvre”.
There are now many web sources and YouTube videos about this, The one I have bookmarked is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SLm76jQg3g
Hope thsi helps!
I will take a look, bit in my case the problem is clearly related to an inner ear infection for which the treatment continues
I am suffering a little bit this morning, but it seems not as bad
But I would definitely not drive a car as yet
Writing blogs appears to be oossible though….