Rachel Reeves strode onto the stage at the Edinburgh festival in a black jumpsuit and an orange scarf. Iain Dale, in a dark maroon jacket, kicked with a dare. ‘Try, if you can, not to use the phrase “13 wasted Tory years” or “22 billion pound black hole.”’
She likes anything that involves net zero. She regards the Labour party as the saviour of this self-harming energy policy.
‘What else am I going to talk about?’ said Reeves. She’s a much warmer and funnier soul than her TV image suggests. Dale asked about the awkward moment when she wept during PMQs in June.
‘I was having a bit of a day, a difficult day at work,’ she said vaguely. ‘There was stuff going on. But it’s different for me. The cameras are on me. But most people have days at work when they cry.’
Dale asked if her troubles had been exacerbated by the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, who mentioned in the chamber that she ‘was looking miserable.’
‘Well, it was a fact, wasn’t it,’ said Reeves.
So why not just skip PMQs? asked Dale.
‘I thought I was OK,’ she said. ‘Obviously, I wasn’t. But I thought I was.’
Dale asked about her childhood and her early involvement in politics. Her parents were primary school teachers who voted Labour but weren’t party members. Aged 17, appalled by the ruinous state of her school, she decided to join the Bromley Labour party. ‘The playground was freezing in winter and the library had been converted into a classroom. There just weren’t enough textbooks to go round.’ She was inspired by Blair’s slogan, ‘education, education, education’ and she campaigned in the 1997 election alongside her younger sister, Ellie, now an MP and chair of the Labour party. At university, she was known as a political wonk and her friends bought her a framed portrait of Gordon Brown for her 19th birthday. The chancellorship, she said, was always in her sights. ‘The office has existed for 800 years and it’s about time we had a female chancellor. But it shouldn’t have taken 800 years.’
After Labour’s victory last July, she invited Brown to the Treasury which he hadn’t visited since 2007. She asked him how old he was when he became chancellor. He told her he couldn’t remember. ‘I’m only 46,’ she said. This jogged his memory. ‘Well, I was 45.’
Dale asked if Brown likes to call her and offer political advice.
‘He doesn’t phone,’ she said. ‘He sends me emails with quite a lot of capital letters.’
And does he point out her mistakes?
‘No. But he does have a lot of ideas,’ she said diplomatically.
Brown isn’t the only former chancellor who wants access to his successor. She’s on friendly terms with Rishi Sunak’s chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. ‘Jeremy’s been in Number 11 a couple of times, had a cup of tea with me, and given good advice.’
Dale asked if she expected to meet Donald Trump on his forthcoming state visit and she didn’t seem to care either way. ‘I suppose so,’ she said, airily. ‘I met Macron a few weeks ago.’
Did she have a message for Trump? She ducked the question and praised her own government. ‘We’ve got our trade deal with the US. One of the best trade deals in the world. At the G7, all the finance ministers want to find out how we got our trade deal.’
Dale invited her to say a word in favour of Brexit which enabled the UK to dodge the tariffs levied by America on the EU. She refused to do so. Instead she talked about the levels of global investment arriving in Britain. She mentioned a figure of ‘£125 billion’ but much of this involves carbon capture and renewables produced by GB Energy. The funds are being underwritten by state subsidies. ‘We’re investing public money to leverage in that private money,’ she said. In other words, foreign investors are being bribed to set up shop in the UK. But she likes anything that involves net zero. She regards the Labour party as the saviour of this self-harming energy policy.
‘The Tories legislated for [net zero] but are rowing back on it. And Reform are coming out with all sorts of conspiracy theories.’
Asked if she regretted any part of her 2024 budget, she gave herself a glowing review. She even praised the wildly unpopular National Insurance rise because it allowed her to sink an extra £25 billion in the NHS. The UK economy is in great shape, she seems to believe. And she twice quoted this odd-looking statistic. ‘In the first quarter of this year, the UK had the fastest growing economy in the G7.’
Dale asked about Your Party (or ‘Jezbollah’ as he called it) created by Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana. Reeves laid the blame on Corbyn’s hunger for power despite failing to become prime minister in 2017 and 2019. ‘He gave us Labour’s worst result since 1935. He’s been rejected twice. But he’s got a big ego.’
Reeves is surprisingly cool about introducing new wealth taxes. She said the government already takes a big chunk with inheritance tax and capital gains tax. ‘I’m not keen to do what Switzerland does with a wealth tax. And we may lose money.’
But her abiding instinct is to expand the state and to pay for it by increasing taxes. A hard-left questioner from the floor asked her to ‘stop scoring own goals’ and tax people more.
‘But we have increased taxes,’ she cried in outrage. ‘Last year’s was the biggest tax-raising budget ever.’
That’s how she thinks. She’s crippling the economy and she couldn’t be more proud.
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