{"id":93954,"date":"2026-07-16T06:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T05:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=93954"},"modified":"2026-07-16T06:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T05:50:13","slug":"a-mahmood-chancellorship-would-be-a-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/07\/16\/a-mahmood-chancellorship-would-be-a-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mahmood Chancellorship would be a disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/54d17925-a1d3-4bae-a1bc-a325df7577dd?shareType=nongift&amp;syn-25a6b1a6=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FT reported<\/a> last night:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-93955\" src=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-15-at-18.37.07-550x116.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"116\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-15-at-18.37.07-550x116.png 550w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-15-at-18.37.07-768x162.png 768w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-15-at-18.37.07-600x127.png 600w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-15-at-18.37.07.png 1288w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Why did they say that? Because there has been a massive lobby against Ed Miliband getting this job, and he is now expected to be Foreign Secretary instead.<\/p>\n<p>But let's just imagine what this means for a moment.<\/p>\n<p>Mahmood is known to be from the far right of Labour. She is someone who, as Home Secretary, has tried not just to out-Tory the Tories, but also to out-Reform Reform. We can assume, therefore, that her economic thinking is very right-wing inclined, although the truth is that, as a lawyer, we have little idea what her economics are. She has never said much on the subject that I can find, but as a representative of Blue Labour I think we can safely predict that she will focus on:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>maintaining credibility with financial markets<\/li>\n<li>keeping borrowing under control<\/li>\n<li>respecting fiscal rules, at least until there was a political reason to alter them<\/li>\n<li>pursuing gradual rather than significant reform, if she does reform at all.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Is she, in that case, the Chancellor we need given the crises Burnham's government is going to face? The answer is, of course, that she is not. She is exactly what we do not need.<\/p>\n<p>This country is facing many economic crises. We need radical thinking, a whole new economic framing based on modern monetary theory, and someone who puts people and not markets first at this moment, and it looks as though we are going to get someone who will do exactly what the deeply neoliberal thinkers in the Treasury tell her to do instead.<\/p>\n<p>The next three years will be a disaster if she is in No. 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the FT reported last night: Why did they say that? Because there has been a massive lobby against Ed Miliband getting this job, and<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/07\/16\/a-mahmood-chancellorship-would-be-a-disaster\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,35,16,147,118,174,224,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-ethics","category-inequality","category-labour","category-modern-monetary-theory","category-neoliberalism","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93954"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93957,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93954\/revisions\/93957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}