What does the Chancellor Rachel Reeves have in common with American singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter? And how should world leaders deal with Donald Trump? Tory peer David Frost, Labour peer Maurice Glasman and pollster James Kanagasooriam joined Spectator editor Michael Gove and Spectator political editor Katy Balls to answer these questions, and plenty of others, at the latest Coffee House Shots Live podcast at London’s Cadogan Hall.
The panel unpacked Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement at the on-stage recording last week, just hours after the Chancellor had delivered it in the Commons. Michael Gove said the statement – in which Reeves revealed Britain’s growth forecast for this year has been slashed – was thin gruel:
‘It’s not Diana Ross that I thought of when I heard the Spring Statement. Instead, I thought of Sabrina Carpenter. Because this Spring Statement had very little in it that was original. It just about covered the essentials. And the Chancellor refused to say what the real cost was, no matter how many times people asked the question’.
Kanagasooriam, Chief Research Officer at Focaldata, said that although Reeves avoided a Liz Truss-style Budget catastrophe, there may be trouble ahead for the government:
‘I don’t think there’ll be a massive polling reaction to this Statement. But you can see already from the reaction on the left of the Labour Party, that there are a lot of conversations about austerity and people asking: is this really why we’ve elected a Labour government? Something that I think that’s really going to kick off over this year into 2026 is the rise of the challenge from the left.’
Frost told the audience of Spectator readers and subscribers that Reeves should not be too pleased with how the economy is faring under her watch:
‘I don’t think the conduct of economic policy over the last decade or so has been great. But I think Rachel Reeves has sort of taken (this approach) and made it worse. She hasn’t kind of done anything radically different. We had tax increases, we had spending increases, we had regulation increases, we had net zero. We had all the things that were stopping growth under the Tories.’
Maurice Glasman, founder of Blue Labour, said that it is clear that politicians need to listen up to voters. ‘The working class are…completely pissed off with the system of the last 40 to 50 years,’ he said.
One politician intent on disrupting the political and economic status quo is Donald Trump. The US president’s unconventional style has left the US’s allies floundering, not least over the impact of tariffs. But Glasman, the only Labour politician to attend Trump’s inauguration, suggested that, despite the uproar, Trump’s tariffs might not be so bad:
‘If there’s one word I love in the English language, it’s tariff. I really like tariffs. I think it’s huge what’s happening in America. I think it’s absolutely aligned with our interests. And every time America announces a tariff, I’d announce one too, in line with that.’
The panellists concluded the event, held in partnership with Charles Stanley, by taking questions from the audience, which included a group of sixth formers from Harris Westminster, and a large contingent of students from King’s College London.
You can listen to a full recording of Coffee House Shots Live: Spring Statement Special here
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