According to Rachel Reeves and her Treasury ministers, there will be a crisis in the City of London today because the £5 billion of savings that she claimed were essential to avoid this outcome have been removed from the bill intended to cut disability benefits.
Reeves always made a mistake by claiming that those with disabilities, and as a consequence amongst the poorest in the whole of society in the UK, must be those who would make the sacrifice to apparently prevent the wrath of the bond markets descending upon the government, so imperilling the stability of the UK economy.
The mistakes were, in fact, threefold.
First, it was in making this claim, for which there is absolutely no evidence.
The second was in actually saying what she thought, because she can now be proved to be wrong.
The third, was in not considering the alternatives, including cancelling part of the quantitive tightening programme, cutting pension tax reliefs for the wealthy, equalising capital gains tax and income tax rates, and the whole raft of other options that always existed, which she ignored precisely because they might, very marginally, increase the tax bills of the wealthiest, and she has always thought that is something that she cannot do.
Of course, I cannot be sure that the wrath of the City will not descend on Labour. It might, but I very strongly suspect it will not.
The best reason for that is that the City is, no doubt, delighted that the incompetence of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves has been exposed and will be celebrating far too hard to actually bother about rubbing salt into the wounds.
I will, of course, be watching, but if the nonsense that Rachel Reeves had to say about this Bill is proved to be just that, and was never worth people's while to report, then her credibility will be damaged even more, and no one will believe her again.
That, I suspect, is exactly why the City will be happy to do nothing, because nothing could please them more than to see Rachel Reese go, because they, like everyone else, know that she is not up to the job that she is doing.
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If the City is wise I suggest that they will avoid rubbing her face in it otherwise a more competent Chancellor could put them in their place
Not only does Labour not understand the economy, I suspect many ministers do not either (or if they do, they are deliberately misdirecting everyone else).
I only recently discovered that that The Crown Estate apparently owns the seabed out to 12 miles, so if you harvest seaweed, or want to build a wind farm, money goes straight to the King. The Crown Estate says that they are “managers of the seabed”, which sounds like a euphemism for exploiting a national asset. https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/our-business/marine/marine-overview
It gets worse. The Crown Estate also “manages” the Forshaw (beaches). Every time a lifeboat is launched, they have to pay a fee to cross the land. Part of your RNLI charity donations goes straight to the King. https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/our-business/marine/coastal
And who was it who granted control of the seabed to the Crown, Ian? Step forward Tony Blair – whose government passed an Act back in 2004. Still, I suppose we (the people) that the Crown Estate does only keep 25% of the surplus generated by the Estate – the other 75% goes to the Treasury, though given all the other benefits the Royal Household enjoy I’d have thought 10% might be more appropriate. Then again. I’ve never been a royalist.
Project fear again and again, and again and…………well, we know don’t we………………..
As you say, the claim is without any foundation unless you think the CBRA is made up of funds from private banks which it is not.
“her credibility will be damaged even more, and no one will believe her again.”
Did she ever have any credibility? (ref lots of posting by Col Smithers).
“Believe her” – the woman is at best deluded & ignorant, at worst a liar & fantasist in the same class as Johnson.
She is in the position she is in – because she is good at “following orders”. (whose?)
Past history suggests that the neurons she has appear to be mostly focused on fiddling expenses.
As for the “c(sh)ity” – time it was cut down to size – it is destroying what is left of the UK.
“they, like everyone else, know that she is not up to the job that she is doing.”
they, like everyone else, know that she is not up to the job that she isn’t doing.
Fixed the typo for you 🙂
Reeves’ dire warning sound as ridiculous as Alexei Sayle’s old quip about the world economy in the early noughties being brought down by Wolverhampton spending too much on public libraries.
Agreed
The UK has dropped out of the top 20 nations for Real Median Equivalised Disposable Income Per Capita (PPP adjusted USD) . At just under $27,000, it is just behind Italy, and will shortly be overtaken by Spain,Estonia and Poland. The UK is on its way to replicating the economies of Portugal and Greace.
The ratio of the above; now a prime, global metric to Nominal GDP per Capita, highlites the share that household get of the latter. For instance the ratio for Ireland is circa 30%. Luxemburg 38%. Basically, those two are Tax Havens with small countries attached. The US; UK and Germany are in the 60 – 80% bracket.
BTW. ONS have corrected the axes on the chart Sarah questioned.
The city slickers will only be concerned when a competent Chancellor takes over and possibly removes their snouts from the trough.
As there is no such person around, they have nothing to worry about.
It is striking that MPs and Ministers have no formal training or formal qualification for the roles which they perform by contrast with those people who perform any other role of significance. (I seem to recall Jacqui Smith observing after her resignation as minister in Tony Blair’s government that she had no experience of running an organisation of 300, 00 people. If I am incorrect in that then I apologise.)