Rachel reeves

Thursday

The Spectator

Rachel Reeves’s self-defeating attack on British racing

Few British traditions can claim as long a history as racing. The first races thought to have taken place in these islands were organised by Roman soldiers encamped in Yorkshire, pitting English horses against Arabian. By the 900s, King Athelstan was placing an export ban on English horses due to their superiority over their continental equivalents. The first recorded race meeting took place under Henry II in Smithfield as part of the annual Bartholomew Fair. Nearly 1,000 years later, racing remains the nation’s second most popular spectator sport. Five million people attend more than 1,400 meets throughout the year. The industry is estimated to be worth more than £4 billion,

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

This is the least business-savvy government in half a century

In this season of scant corporate news – a Ryanair rant against the French here, a new BP oilfield there – it’s hard to know what business leaders are thinking about the cold months to come. Until, that is, you read a survey conducted last month for the Institute of Directors. Given that I’m writing from France this month, I’d call it an absolute croissant-dropper. The nub is that 639 UK businesses, large and small, report ‘optimism in prospects for the UK economy’ at -72, lower even than their darkest pandemic sentiment at -69 in April 2020. Export hopes and investment intentions are down, wage expectations are sharply up and,

The Spectator

Britain is broke – and we all need to face it

Sometimes when I go to bed, I think that if I were a young man I would emigrate,’ said James Callaghan, the then foreign secretary, in 1974. He was referring to that decade’s chronic economic dysfunction, with its double-digit inflation, growing unemployment and stuttering growth. Two years later, as prime minister, he would have to go cap in hand to request a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Two years after that came the Winter of Discontent. Today’s economic picture may not be quite so bleak. Even so, the young see only intractable stagnation, cost-of-living pressures and visible decline. A recent poll suggested that more than a quarter of 18-

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Are Reeves and Starmer really in ‘lockstep’?

‘She and I work together, we think together,’ said Sir Keir Starmer of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. ‘In the past, there have been examples – I won’t give any specific – of chancellors and prime ministers who weren’t in lockstep. We’re in lockstep.’ ‘Sounds like you and me,’ said my husband sarcastically. But I was wondering whether the Prime Minister was aware of the connotations of his claim about being in lockstep. The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives the meaning ‘in perfect or rigid, often mindless, conformity’. An image might be the scene in Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1927), where the overalled workers change shift, their heads bowed, their

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Rachel Reeves cries, Rishi Sunak joins Goldman Sachs and a six-month bin strike

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had given a theme to the week by sitting weeping behind Sir Keir Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions. She later said: ‘It was a personal issue.’ Sir Keir said: ‘She will be Chancellor for a very long time to come.’ No. 10 said she and the Prime Minister were ‘in lockstep’. The government found itself short of the £5 billion it had meant to save in the welfare bill, thwarted by its own MPs. The Office for Budget Responsibility said that, with rising debt, ‘The UK’s fiscal position is increasingly vulnerable’. Asked whether she would rule out tax rises in the autumn, the

Saturday

Tim Shipman

Labour’s first year (in review) with Tim Shipman & Quentin Letts

22 min listen

Cast your mind back a year. Labour had just won a storming majority, promising ‘change’ to a stale Tory party that was struggling to govern. But have things got any better? In the magazine this week, Tim Shipman writes the cover piece to mark the occasion of Labour’s first year in government. He takes readers through three chapters: from Sue Gray (freebies scandal and winter fuel cut) to Morgan McSweeney (a degree of professionalisation and dealing with the Donald) to the point at which ‘things fall apart’ (assisted dying, the welfare vote and Reeves’s tears). On the podcast, Tim is joined by The Spectator’s James Heale as well as sketchwriter

Thursday

Oscar Edmondson

NHS reforms: Labour puts on a brave face

14 min listen

Today Wes Streeting – with the help of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves – announced his 10 year plan for curing the NHS. It’s all about creating a ‘Neighbourhood Health Service’, but what does actually mean in practice?  Much of the plan was leaked in advance: first, focusing on preventing disease before it becomes too late; second, improving community healthcare services to help reduce pressure on hospitals; and third, embracing the tech revolution to bring the NHS into the ‘digital age’. One of the glaring omissions is a chapter on how this will all be delivered. Perhaps the most notable part of today’s launch was the decision to include Rachel

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

How Labour governments always end

Couldn’t we just skip to the end? I’m old enough to have seen this so often: must I sit through each dreary succeeding scene again? Parties in government are animals: they have natures; their natures do not change; they are incapable of being different animals; and what follows, follows. A Labour government finally runs out of money and enters a period of slow-motion disintegration, ending in a chaos of finger-pointing and blame-shifting, still whimpering about social justice as the bailiffs move in. Already the suspense has gone. There will be many twists and turns, probably over years rather than months, before this government pulls apart at the seams; but, honestly,

Saturday

Michael Simmons

Why is Britain’s economy so unhealthy?

20 min listen

The Spectator’s economics editor Michael Simmons is joined by the outgoing boss of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Paul Johnson and the CEO of the Resolution Foundation Ruth Curtice to understand why Britain’s economy is in such a bad place. Given it feels like we are often in a doom loop of discussion about tax rises, does this point to a structural problem with the British economy? And why are the public’s expectations so out of line with the state’s capabilities? Michael, Paul and Ruth talk about whether it’s fair for Labour to claim they’ve been ending austerity, the extent to which the effects of the covid-19 pandemic are still

Thursday

Claire Ainsley

Is Rachel Reeves’s headroom shrinking?

13 min listen

There were clear winners and losers in Rachel Reeves’s spending review yesterday but some of her announcements around capital spending and investment saw her dubbed the ‘Klarna Chancellor’ by LBC’s Nick Ferrari for her ‘buy now, pay later’ approach. Clearly trying to shake off the accusations of being ‘austerity-lite’, Labour point to longer term decisions made yesterday, such as over energy policy and infrastructure. But will voters see much benefit in the short-term? And, with the news today that Britain’s GDP shrank by 0.3% in April, will the decisions Rachel Reeves have to make only get harder before the October budget? Lucy Dunn speaks to Michael Simmons and Claire Ainsley,

James Heale James Heale

Rachel Reeves, the Iron Chancer

Gordon Brown may not be every teenager’s political pin-up. But as an Oxford student, Rachel Reeves proudly kept a framed photo of him in her bedroom. It was Brown who introduced the first multi-year spending review in 1998: the kind of big political set-piece speech which he relished. Reeves’s speech on Wednesday showed the level of constraints facing the Treasury this decade vs the 1990s. Chess, not poker, is the Chancellor’s chosen game of recreation. As a player and a politician, she prides herself on making decisions guided by skill, care and thought. Yet this week she staked her government’s future on a series of political bets. Her tax rises

Tuesday

Michael Simmons

Labour goes nuclear while Reform turns to coal

17 min listen

Rachel Reeves has pledged a ‘new era of nuclear power’ as the government confirms a £14.2 billion investment in the Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk. This comes on the eve of Labour’s spending review, with the government expected to highlight spending pledges designed to give a positive impression of Labour’s handling of the economy. However, as Michael Simmons tells James Heale and Lucy Dunn, there are signs that the government’s National Insurance hike is starting to bite. Plus – Nigel Farage has made two announcements in as many days. This morning, he unveiled Reform’s new chairman, former MEP Dr David Bull, taking over from the recently returned Zia Yusuf.

Monday

James Heale

Labour try to silence ‘austerity-lite’ accusations

13 min listen

James Nation, formerly a special adviser to Rishi Sunak and now an MD at Forefront Advisers, joins the Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale and economics editor Michael Simmons, to talk through the latest on the government’s spending review, which is due to be announced on Wednesday. The last holdout appears to be Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, pushing for more police funding. But, against a tough fiscal landscape, what can we expect? And how much does it matter with the wider public? Plus – former chairman Zia Yusuf returned to Reform just two days after resigning, what’s going on? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Wednesday

James Heale

How to do a spending review

21 min listen

Labour’s spending review is expected on the 11th of June, when we will find out which government departments face cuts and which costs have been ringfenced. This can set the tone for politics for months to come as it gives a clue to which priorities matter most – especially in times of fiscal restraint – and which ministers are up, and which are down. But how is a spending review conducted? How does His Majesty’s Treasury balance the negotiations with those competing for its attention? And, following the leaked Angela Rayner memo, do we know which economic arguments are winning out? James Nation, formerly an official at HMT and then in

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: In praise of the post office

Reeves’s road sense Sir: Is it stubbornness, denial, inexperience or some other agenda that prevents Rachel Reeves changing course in the face of uncomfortable facts? A multitude of surveys have told her that punitively taxing the rich means they will leave (‘The great escape’, 17 May). Recently I had lunch at a fashionable London club that was half-empty. When asked why this was, our waiter commented that he now rarely sees his previous international regulars, and if he does, they are only in town for a short stay. Endless business surveys have also told Reeves that her employer taxes will cost jobs, close companies, weaken growth and raise inflation, yet

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Beef farmers have been stitched up

An awkward delay in the unveiling of the Mansion House Accord was, we’re told, nothing more than a Downing Street ‘timetabling issue’. It was perhaps a tenterhooks issue too, as Donald Trump’s Sharpie hovered over the UK-US trade deal which was clearly going to make bigger headlines. But the Accord also had to contend with City discord around the issue of ‘mandation’ of pension funds to invest in unlisted equity that might contribute to future UK growth. In July 2023, 11 institutions inked the first Mansion House ‘compact’, committing 5 per cent of ‘defined contribution’ pension monies to private equity by the end of the decade. Now 17 industry leaders

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

The rich are fleeing – what next?

Keir Starmer is worried about who’s coming into the country. This week, he launched a white paper with the aim of cutting migration. Britain risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’, he said. However, it’s not just arrivals that should give him sleepless nights. It’s the number of people in the departures lounge too. London’s private members’ clubs, top schools, luxury car dealerships and estate agents are all grappling with the same problem: their customers are fleeing the country. Since 2016, almost 30,000 millionaires have left Britain – an outflow unmatched in the developed world. They are either returning home or moving abroad. The reason is a slew of tax changes

Andrew Gimson

Your state pension is a socialist bribe

Every four weeks the government sends me my state pension. Those words have a socialist, almost Soviet, ring. The amount has recently risen to £11,973 a year – a preposterous sum to send a 67-year-old man still in paid employment. But from the state’s point of view, the money is not entirely wasted: it buys a kind of loyalty. Because I accept the money, and do so with a certain pleasure, I am bound into the system and am less likely to say it’s a bad one. I’ve allowed myself to become a dependent. I may criticise the way the welfare state is run and demand improvements in the administration

Thursday

Michael Simmons

Who do voters trust most on the economy?

12 min listen

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been in Washington D.C. this week at the IMF’s spring meetings, and will meet US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tomorrow. Cue the ususal talk of compromising on chlorinated chicken. Not so, reports the Spectator’s economics editor Michael Simmons, who explains that Reeves may offer a reduction in long-standing tariffs already imposed on American cars. But, it’s been a bad week of economic news for the Chancellor as the IMF downgraded the UK’s growth forecast.  We’re also one week away from the local elections – Starmer’s first big test since last year’s general election. The economy isn’t usually the number one issue at local elections but, as More in

Thursday

William Moore

Cruel Labour, the decline of sacred spaces & Clandon Park’s controversial restoration

51 min listen

This week: Starmerism’s moral vacuum‘Governments need a mission, or they descend into reactive incoherence’ writes Michael Gove in this week’s cover piece. A Labour government, he argues, ‘cannot survive’ without a sense of purpose. The ‘failure of this government to make social justice its mission’ has led to a Spring Statement ‘that was at once hurried, incoherent and cruel – a fiscal drive-by shooting’.  Michael writes that Starmer wishes to emulate his hero – the post-war Prime Minister Clement Atlee, who founded the NHS and supported a fledgling NATO alliance. Yet, with policy driven by Treasury mandarins, the Labour project is in danger of drifting, as John Major’s premiership did.