Rachel Reeves’s spending review was the ‘most incomprehensible speech I’ve ever heard from a chancellor’, according to Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He spoke to me on today’s edition of Coffee House Shots.
In this special episode, I was also joined by Ruth Curtice, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, to take a wider look at Britain’s fiscal and economic problems. Why, despite record tax levels, do our public services feel as if they’re in managed decline? Why do voters’ expectations of the state seem so out of whack with what we actually deliver?
We discussed whether Ruth’s predecessor, Torston Bell, was right to claim Labour has ended austerity, and how much the lingering effects of Covid still shape where we are today. Paul and Ruth examined whether our economic doom loop – the endless chatter about tax rises and spending squeezes – are explained by structural problems in the British economy. Are tax rises inevitable? Or do the public need to get on board with a smaller state.
Finally, I asked what they would do as Treasury dictators with a free hand to reform any policy they like. Listen below.
Comments