Is the Chancellor about to crash the economy?

Quite.

The only way out of the mess that's been brewing for the last 30 years is economic growth. Get the economy growing steadily, then tax revenues will rise and then things like education, the NHS, benefits and national debt can be sorted out.

Higher taxes might give an immediate boost to public finances, but long term higher taxes lead to higher prices, fewer jobs and a bigger welfare bill. You can't tax your way out of a crisis, you can only grow your way out and this takes decades.

Politicians are only interested in the immediate term because they know they will be gone in a few years. On average a Prime Minister serves five years in all. Usually there's the relatively successful one who does ten years and a bunch who do less.

It's shocking how the public fall for their lies every time. Many people genuinely seemed to think that Labour would be better. They're just as shit as the Tories. What concerns me most is this is Starmer's honeymoon period still, he can still trot out "it's the fuckin' Tories' fault" line at the dispatch box. The current set of front benchers are the best they've got. When they fuck up too much, they'll get replaced by a set of less competent people.

At least Truss and Sunak had the excuse that they were the 4th and 5th best iterations of the last Tory era. Truss replaced third-rate Johnson who replaced second-best May who replaced the man who actually got them elected and, in hindsight, seems like the most competent PM we've had in a hell of a long time.

No wonder your party was so inept with your logic, it was 1.23, same as today

1.14 when your PM Truss was in..... 1.12 under Thatcher at one point in the 80s, yet you, mistakenly, no doubt, said "historic lows"

I'm all for constructive criticism and comment but not misinformation.

Reeves has made matters worse, no doubt with extra borrowing. tax rises and fiscal rules but where else do we raise the money to fix things that your party wrecked, like the NHS and roads?

I knew Rachel didn't have what it takes during Covid. She was hopeless in Parliament when challenging the Tory finances re covid support schemes, costs of track & trace, etc. Clearly out of her depth as Rishi ran rings round her. She had a massive open goal with the 3 million freelancers and self employed excluded from the covid support schemes, but she hadn't a clue as to the detail of why all the different groups within the 3 million were excluded so her weak and pathetic challenges were easily batted away by Rishi as she clearly didn't understand the detail, i.e. in one case affecting hundreds of thousands of people, she didn't pick up on the difference between "sales" and "income" which Rishi exploited to try to defend his mistakes. There were other similar failings in her attention to detail and understanding, of what is a pretty basic/simple aspect of small business finances. A few random back benchers made better challenges and clearly had bothered to read up and research the detail - such a shame that Rachel either didn't bother or simply didn't understand!

”the tories did…..” argument has reached its shelf life.

When labour were first elected one could quite rightly say that labour had some work to do. And if labour had actually done anything, or implemented any policies in order to unpick some of what the tories had done then it could rightly be argued that we needed to bide our time. But labour haven’t implemented a single policy which stands to benefit anyone.

Instead of raising income tax which, while it would have disadvantaged some people, they have raised national insurance which has led to redundancies and less employment meaning that people are losing their jobs so are far worse off than they would have been if they’d had a tax rise.

The winter fuel allowance was scrapped, funny how a year ago the same party who have just scrapped that were shouting at the Tory government that they would be responsible for the deaths of thousands of pensioners if they did the same, so presumably those perceived deaths are ok if they’re done under labour then?

I despise the tories and didn’t vote for them, but the economy was actually starting to grow before the election, in come labour and the economy is now shrinking and inflation is going up. Again.

The only thing that labour had going for them during the election was “we’re not the tories,” and people voted them in purely on that basis. Now labour has been elected because they’re not the tories, and it’s time for them to prove it. Except they’re not.

Oh and “these threads are started by Tory bots” is equally tedious and pathetic.

Do people really think that because someone thinks that labour is doing a crap job they can’t possibly be an anything other than a Tory voter/bot?

Plenty of people didn’t vote for either party.

But if we’re not careful we will end up with Nigel Farage as our next prime minister, because there isn’t a leader among the rest of them.

I also work with the public sector and can attest they are clueless, money wasting, inefficient bunch that thinks there is unlimited budget. And you don't see non performers get fired either, not even the guy who I'm not exaggerating, works maybe 40% of his contracting hours and missing most of the times. They just move sideways to different teams or get promoted! And the oh so clueless clearly DEI hires who are managers. The fat needs trimming desperately. And labour wants to make it even bigger 😩

I've never been so worried about living standard, not even when the Tories were in power. Enough to make me consider leaving the country. The future seems so bleak.

Also, people seem to hate the Tories because it's ingrained in them to hate the 'posh twats'. I live in a strong Labour stronghold where people just don't use their critical thinking as to why are we supporting this failure of a government. Everyone I work with are virtue signalling Labour supporters too which is scary to see.

Typical response on these threads but odd at this point

Do you work in the public sector? This type of post is on every thread where Labour feel criticised but surely you can’t be missing what’s happening

If you need to look at where things are coming from any destabilisation is due to Reeves / Starmer’s policies not posts on mn talking about the impact

The increase in NI was a stupid move. How does making it more expensive to employ people lead to growth? I work for a large charity and it's going to increase our costs by a huge amount. The only solutions are to deliver less of our charitable work or make people redundant. It's pretty bloody obvious really but the government doesn't care.

I actually can't believe we have stooped so low in the UK. Its like all the adults left the room and blamed someone else for errors and then moved departments to dodge a bullet.
. It seems we have a political culture of doing the best to avoid ANY accountability. I'm sick of hearing ‘Lessons learnt’ Indeed it seems the vast amount of people
In Whitelhall believe they are still at school!

God I hope so, and her stupid decisions reversed so someone qualified can relook and stop destroying our country.

Whether or not she’s put taxes up she’s not done anything to prevent net taxpayers leaving either, and there is a huge exodus happening right now.

Because of the tax system set up by previous governments (but mostly the coalition) the tax system disproportionately taxes the higher earners much more than it does in the high tax countries you are talking about. So it’s much more painful for the UK when we lose them. The vast majority of people in the UK are not net contributors.

I voted Labour and don’t think Reeves has what it takes. I knew that as soon as she focused on VAT for schools and winter fuel allowance in a borderline obsessed way that she wasn’t a strategic thinker.

It's fairly obvious every time she opens her mouth that she does very little thinking at all. Woefully incompetent and surely on borrowed time now.

Nonsense. That is just so offensively incorrect.

Rachel Reeves has not put any income taxes up for high earners whatsoever.

The Tories created the biggest income tax grab ever by not raising tax thresholds proportionately.

Loads of countries pay far more tax than we do in the UK and have far better state pensions and public services across the board.

She's awful, not sure how she couldn't see that this will have a hideous impact on low wage jobs pushing up the benefits bill and probably raising very little net. She claimed to be an economist but at HBOS worked in customer complaints, she's going to get a lot of complaints at the next election at this rate.

For 2 days , when it recovered. It’s a BBC myth that she crashed the economy for any longer than that.

Who represents the working classes best then?

An investment bank trader who is prepared to gamble away the country like Nigel Farage?

Could you not be more facile? Do try harder.

How many of the 40 hospitals promised did Boris build?

Why are people waiting 50 hours in A&E right now?

Why are a fifth of 15 year olds absent from school?

Why are there millions of families in poverty?

Why are millions of people on waiting lists for surgery and unable to work?

Why do nurses have to go to food banks?

Why did legal net migration increase exponentially under Rishi Sunak in 2021 to the biggest number of immigrants we have ever had in history? Wow - we really took back our borders. So worth it for blue passports and all businesses buried under totally unnecessary red tape.

Why don't you take your head out of your arse and ask yourself who has crashed this country since 2010.

How long do you think it would take any government to remedy 14 years of tanking the economy and ideological destruction of public services in the name of greed and self interest?

£400 per month energy bill? Have you tried closing a window?

We run the heating 24x7 and pay £75 p/m for gas including the standing charge.

I feel absolutely relieved that we changed government from the Conservatives who put up our mortgages hundreds of pounds a month and allowed my energy bill to rise from £175 a month to over £400 s month in the space of 18 months. I've never known any government so.utterly corrupt, incompetent and such an utter shambles with the economy.

Working class people - MN do investigate trolls and bots, feel free to report posts you don’t think are genuine.

Cant you imagine a situation where the ordinary person is worried about their job security, future mortgage payments!? The economy is insane right now.

Bet you can't find the traffic lights in a set of nine boxes.