Rachel reeves

Today

James Heale

Spending review: a return to austerity?

13 min listen

Preparations are stepping up for the government’s spending review, due in June. The Chancellor has taken a more personable approach to communicating with ministers, writing to them to outline how they plan to implement the Budget – with a crackdown on government waste and prioritising key public services. So, expect money for clean energy, the NHS, and more ‘difficult decisions’. Will Rachel Reeves’s war on waste work? How will this all go down within the Labour Party and the Cabinet? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Thursday

The Spectator

Labour’s confidence tricks

There is nothing new, nor necessarily fatal, about making a poor start in government. Margaret Thatcher had a torrid first couple of years in office, set back by galloping inflation and mass unemployment, before she found her direction. Those who assume that Keir Starmer is doomed to be a one-term prime minister thanks to his plunging popularity are speaking too soon. The resignation of Louise Haigh over a historic fraud conviction will swiftly pass. The mini-scandal of freebies accepted by government ministers, which kept Fleet Street occupied over the summer, has already been largely forgotten. Starmer is good at setting targets, rather less good at coming up with any realistic

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Labour’s attack on farmers

Losing the plot Sir: Your leading article ‘Blight on the land’ (23 November) is right to call out the hypocrisy and vindictiveness of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Agricultural Property Relief cuts. Sadly, this is just one part of the Labour government’s multi-pronged attack on farmers, in sharp contrast to the promises they made before the general election. The 7 per cent rise in the minimum wage and the 9 per cent jump in employers’ national insurance contributions will hit all businesses, but given the 56 per cent slump in farm incomes over the past 12 months, farming is one of the sectors least able to cover such increases. The government also

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What Scott Bessent’s appointment means for Trump 2.0

How rare it is to be given a second chance. That’s what the American people have handed Donald Trump. His second shot at the presidency means avoiding past mistakes, which in TrumpWorld means finally harnessing the full power of the state. Even in the last year of his first term, Trump was struggling to fill all the political appointment vacancies he had at his disposal. This was the consequence of never developing a real plan for governing that went beyond chanting ‘Drain the swamp’. Elon Musk talked down Bessent as the ‘business-as-usual choice’, but that’s what markets are looking for This time round, things are going to be different. Trump

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

What does the City really think of the Chancellor?

Regular invitations to Mansion House banquets petered out after I asked a shifty-looking waiter for a glass of champagne and he told me he was a deputy governor of the Bank of England. So I can’t report firsthand whether last week’s speech by Chancellor Rachel Reeves was greeted by assembled financiers with napkins on their heads or cries of ‘By George, I think she’s got it!’. What I can say is that – her text having been largely leaked beforehand – she was well upstaged by Governor Andrew Bailey’s unexpected attempt to reopen the Brexit debate; and that she seems to ‘get’ the City a lot better than she understands

The Spectator

Rachel Reeves can still repair the damage done to farming

The Chancellor of the Exchequer found time this week to edit her own page on the social media site LinkedIn. She had, it appeared, fallen into error by saying that she had worked as an economist for the Bank of Scotland. Her role had in fact been humbler. No one should be criticised for seeking to correct a mistake. There is no fault in acknowledging that your claims to economic authority were exaggerated, and no shame in embracing humility. Which is why Rachel Reeves should apologise again – without further delay – to Britain’s farmers. For the grotesque, unjust and vindictive tax assault she has launched on the nation’s food

Thursday

James Heale

Will Reeves’s pensions shake-up really boost growth?

13 min listen

The Chancellor is giving her first Mansion House address tonight, and she will be majoring on pensions, suggesting that public sector pension funds need to be expanded. But is this the road to growth? James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Friday

James Heale

Can Labour save its Budget?

14 min listen

The fallout from Labour’s Budget continues. On the media round this morning, Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, admitted that it will hit working people, and the cost of government borrowing has only risen since Rachel Reeves delivered her speech to Parliament. Katy Balls, Kate Andrews and James Heale take us through the reaction from various groups, including small business owners, farmers and the markets. Is the Budget unravelling? Also on the podcast, they look ahead to tomorrow’s Tory leadership result; could low turnout make a difference? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

The Spectator

Rachel Reeves is taking us back to the 1970s

The first fiscal event to be delivered by a female Chancellor of the Exchequer is a landmark moment, but in every other regard this Budget was a return to the familiar, and failed, approach of Labour governments past. This was the Life on Mars Budget – a journey back to the 1970s, only without the cheap booze and fags. Tax rises, increased borrowing, a bigger state, spending on public services unaccompanied by meaningful reform and additional costs for those businesses which create wealth – we have seen all these before and we know they are the markers of decline. This Budget was a journey back to the 1970s, only without

Peter Mandelson

My bid to be chancellor of Oxford

I have spent the past couple of weeks in Oxford rediscovering the art of conversation while campaigning for election as the university’s chancellor. I have sung for my supper in Christ Church Cathedral before being questioned in the SCR on my fitness for the role, and I performed again at evensong at Univ before debating postcolonial reparations over vegetable broth and venison. I have been gifted cyclamens following visits to St Hilda’s and Corpus. At St Hugh’s my understanding of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act was taken apart by the law don, while at Worcester I was challenged on the state of Britain’s naval hard power and the

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Labour’s low growth Budget

15 min listen

Rachel Reeves has announced that taxes will rise by £40 billion in Labour’s first Budget for 14 years. The headlines include: an increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions from April to 15 per cent, raising £25 billion; that the freeze on income tax and National Insurance thresholds will not be extended past 2028; that the lower rate of capital gains tax will be raised from 10 per cent to 18 per cent, and the higher rate from 20 per cent to 24 per cent; that fuel duty will remain frozen for the next two years; and the introduction of VAT on private school fees from January. The Chancellor didn’t want

Monday

James Heale

Budget week: Labour braced for backlash

13 min listen

It’s Budget week (finally)! How this week goes will set the tone for Labour’s first year in office. It’s fair to say that expectations are relatively low – with the Prime Minister himself warning of ‘painful decisions’ ahead. We know a lot of what will likely be included and Treasury sources are keen to play down talk of any Budget rabbits – suggesting a mix of the measures currently being discussed in the media. So what should we expect? And can Labour ride out the week unscathed? Also on the podcast, Labour have suspended the whip for Mike Amesbury, MP for Runcorn and Helsby, after he appeared to threaten a

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

Wahed’s alarming Tube adverts

As the interminable Budget wait goes on, so does the trawl through the Chancellor’s bin bags. I refer to the old tabloid method of digging in celebrities’ dustbins for evidence of depravity or scandal; in Rachel Reeves’s case, that would mean piecing together shredded Treasury analyses on all the various tax wheezes floated since July. One curry-smeared paper no doubt addresses the pros and cons of an inheritance raid on ‘aristocrats and landowners’; beneath the Red Bull cans and pizza crusts, might there be another headed ‘Clawbacks on Enterprise Investment Scheme’? Not that there have been substantive rumours, mind you. But that’s rather the point: having had so many draft

Thursday

Oscar Edmondson

Did Labour make its own Budget trap?

15 min listen

A scoop from Bloomberg has revealed that a number of Cabinet ministers have written formally to the Prime Minister to complain about the budgetary decisions they are being asked to make in their respective departments. Rachel Reeves seems to have an impossible task ahead of the Budget – but was this a trap of Labour’s own making? Oscar Edmondson talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.

William Moore William Moore

Reeves’s gambit, a debate on assisted dying & queer life in postwar Britain

52 min listen

This week: the Chancellor’s Budget dilemma. ‘As a former championship chess player, Rachel Reeves must know that the first few moves can be some of the most important of the game,’ writes Rupert Harrison – former chief of staff to George Osborne – for the cover of the magazine this week. But, he says, the truth is that she has played herself into a corner ahead of this month’s Budget, with her room for manoeuvre dramatically limited by a series of rash decisions. Her biggest problem is that she has repeatedly ruled out increases in income tax, national insurance and VAT. So which taxes will rise, given that the easy

Douglas Murray

The rise of anti-Elonism

You can tell a lot about a country by who it admires. I was pleasantly surprised some years ago to see a poll showing that the most admired man in the UK was Richard Branson. You may not love all his publicity stunts, or have liked the sandwich selection on Virgin trains, but that poll suggested the British public still liked entrepreneurialism and achievement. It seems mainly to affect people who have really never done very much with their lives I slightly dread a rerun of such a poll today, because I suspect that among the youth vote in particular the winner would be the person with the most perceived

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

In defence of eating out

Scheduling the Budget almost four months after their election victory would have counted as a monumental misjudgment for the Labour government were it not for all the other cock-ups that turned their first 100 days into a sitcom. Still, the extended period of speculation about which taxes Rachel Reeves is really planning to raise has done no good at all to her carefully groomed reputation as a ‘serious economist’ (to quote Mark Carney) who is somehow uniquely pro-business and pro-worker. On the contrary, there have even been suggestions that she could be about to unleash chaos on the financial markets akin to the Truss-Kwarteng fiasco of two years ago. But

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Labour’s China pivot, Yvette Cooper’s extremism crackdown & the ladies who punch

48 min listen

Successive governments have struggled with how to deal with China, balancing them as a geopolitical rival yet necessary trade partner. Recent moves from Labour have sent mixed signals, from the free speech act to the return of the Chagos Islands. Further decisions loom on the horizon. As Rachel Reeves seeks some economic wiggle room, can Labour resist the lure of the Chinese market? The Spectator’s Katy Balls, and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) James Crabtree, join the podcast to discuss further (02:05). Plus: as the first issue under The Spectator’s new editor Michael Gove, what are his reflections as he succeeds Fraser Nelson? He reads an excerpt

James Heale James Heale

The ‘Green Budget’ could leave Rachel Reeves red-faced

16 min listen

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published its yearly Green Budget, weeks ahead of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first fiscal event. It’s grim reading, for both the government and the public. For Labour to make good on its promise to avoid ‘austerity’, taxes are going to need to go up significantly: by £25 billion, the IFS’s reports, and that’s just to ‘keep spending rising with national income.’ Can Reeves square the circle?  James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Douglas Murray

Does Keir Starmer have a soul?

One of the main arguments against hereditary peerages is that talent and ability are not always passed down across generations. There is much to this. Students of history will know that all the great dynasties see some kind of falloff in capability. Whether the Habsburgs, the Plantagenets or the Kinnocks, the families produce a man – or occasionally a couple of men – of quality, only to see their heirs and successors squander everything. The same rule exists in a meritocratic age. Someone in a family makes a fortune. The next generation spends it. A generation after that, the family is back to square one. Give or take a generation,