If Starmer and Reeves fuck this budget, Labour will be out of power for ANOTHER generation.

[Ozgirl76]

I was hopeful when Labour came into power - I hoped a calm sensible bunch of economic policies that would help to level things out a bit was on the cards and given that they had so long to prepare, I assumed they would spring into action and at least have some plans.

But now I’m just reading more articles about the huge swing towards Reform and I can’t believe it’s coming to this.

I actually live in Australia but I run a business in the U.K. and we have just had a second term of a very boring and sensible labour government over here who aren’t fixing things yet but they aren’t actively making things worse and I just think, it is possible to have a Labour government who don’t actively hate the richer people, but also are trying to work towards a more equal society.

What do you think is causing the main swing towards the right? Is it all the immigration stuff? Surely that can’t be everything?

And how are Labour doing with that?
Reeves said it was £20 B, what is it now?

There is also the fact that France spends 26% more per capita on healthcare than the UK and has more GPs, doctors, nurses and staffed beds.

If you want the NHS to be better, fund it better and make sure that money goes into additional capacity. Not sell it off to the highest bidder.

A pp said upthread that Labour is too engaged in student politics. I agree, and I think that’s a good summary of the underlying problem.

It’s so obvious how poor the PM is, virtually the whole cabinet, and the Labour backbenches. A vacuum of talent.

Not that ‘presentation’ should matter as much as substance, but Starmer, Reeves, Phillipson, Cooper, Powell, and others are also very difficult to listen to. They’re a bloodless band of incompetents who talk like Daleks. That’s what happens when you go from the NUS into a union/NGO/public sector job and then government with no other experience.

As has been said many times in the media, Labour is the lanyard class.

That said, Reform would be even worse. They’re so stupid they wouldn’t even know how to put a lanyard on.

Unfortunately, as people are so obsessed with "free at point of use", you can't compare the NHS with European health models which are mostly co-funded and/or insurance backed. What we'll end up with is the US expensive system because people in the UK won't contemplate a change to the European style, so we're sleep walking into the collapse of the NHS and having to pay ruinously high costs/insurance for any level of decent healthcare. We should have been transitioning to a co-pay/insurance system for the last couple of decades but politicians have been too scared because the voters won't consider the more sensisble "middle road" alternatives.

Well I had relatives in the North East then and there were no problems getting an appointment with either.

Anyone with PPE from Oxford who has gone straight into politics should be banned! There should also be a min requirement to have worked a proper job for 10 years before becoming an MP. Not working for a union or your mum, a proper job.

That’s the thing - as a business owner, I just can’t fathom the decisions she’s made, they seem so illogical and deliberately designed to make life harder for businesses. I assume there is a plan behind them but it’s very hard to see what the plan could be.

Nail on the head. Current Labour are hopeless, but Reform would be worse. Unfortunately, Tories are unelectable under their current leader, so unless they get rid and have a radical shake up at the top, we're going to have to suffer a term of Reform, until both Labour and Tories get some competent people at the top. It's a nightmare.

Badly!

Niesr put the black hole at £50b

I totally 100% agree with this!

Of course they are going to mess up the next budget. They’ve messed everything up do far so I don’t see this changing.

@Bigpinksweater this is a totally daft statement:
We need to slash benefits, end unemployment benefits after 6 months, deny benefits entirely to able bodied under 25s, and instil a notion that being expected to move or travel for work is not a human rights breach.

Firstly, its really not that easy to just sign on indefinitely as a young unemployed person. It not like the 90's when you could just get sick of your crap job and take a break on the dole for a while!
Secondly, jobs for young people are increasingly hard to get. I know this as a parent with young adults. There's a thread currently by a desperate women with 3 young adults in the house, 2 in education. The oldest has been made redundant and is seeking work, and coming up empty handed. She is in a position where she is trying to keep a roof over the heads of 4 people single handedly.
Young people looking for work need support, and training, opportunities not penalties that make it even harder. How the Hell do you "move for work" with not a penny to your name??
We are in a very precarious economic situation, and yes, we need pro business and growth policies, but penalising people already struggling, and sending them to already overloaded food banks, is not the answer.

Labour hate business, especially small business. Always have, always will. Tories also hate small business, but weren't anywhere near as bad as current Labour. They're all in the pockets of the venture capitalists and billionaires who don't want small/private businesses, so politicians do absolutely nothing for sole traders, small businesses, private businesses, etc. Look at the "initiatives" over the past 2/3 decades - all aimed at large businesses mostly owned by venture capitalists and billionaires. The rot has well and truly set it. Look at farms - land being bought up by venture capitalist funds like Blackrock - same with student housing blocks. Now we have a war against private landlords - again, the venture capitalists want private/individual landlords out of the market so they can sweep in to capture the market. The NIC hike was utterly stupid and damaging to small/medium businesses - Reeves gave no thought/care at all to the obvious consequences on small business and employment. Labour is the party for the work-shy and unionised public sector/quango workers - they don't give a toss about anyone else.

I will be accused of tin foil hat territory by the usual suspects but the plan is Fabianism. It is the only thing to explain the fuck ups and overseeing of economic decline.

These are meant to be intelligent people 🙄 So if they are intelligent then it only leaves 1 alternative ie this is being done on purpose. That's where the ideology comes in. If they aren't being ideological then the only alternative is that they aren't intelligent. Those are the only sides of the coin.
Choose which side you believe.

Exactly!!!
However you will get accused of conspiracy theory by Labour cultists

Just lack of capability and knowledge re SMEs from her, Starmer and Labour generally.

Absolutely- worryingly few jobs for young people at present.
Automation has taken away many of the entry level admin jobs and even retail positions are hard to get with 100s of applications.

Why would you want policies that make it worse? The NI policy for example.

And the employers NI rise remember. That had an immediate effect

Todays career politicians, of all parties simply only care about themselves and there has not been any long-term policies by any party for decades - they can’t even make a decision without leaking it first to see what people think. Spineless and useless the lot of them.

They don’t care about the state of the country. Watch their actions rather than listen to their words.

Look at how much wealth the Tories stripped out of the country for them and their mates under covid, now Labour are doing nothing to fix anything but are buying themselves enormously expensive flats in Hove trying to use the tax tricks of the rich but failing and getting caught out, and Reform knowing how to play the money game but having caused most of the immigration issues themselves with Brexit and having no real clue about the economy etc - (which I guess is the same with Labour).

Self-serving idiots the lot of them.

I’ve been saying for years that if we cared about the high street that business rates for retail/hospitality should be abolished and VAT could be doubled on online purchases. No parties have the courage to do anything meaningful - they get “lobbied” to do exactly what big business wants. They are all corrupt imho.

I fully expect the next election for the Tories to be back (people soon forget all the sins of the previous tory governments) because of a protest vote against Reform - Labour have no chance.

You don't live here.

Why are so many people who don't live in the UK so interested in destroying Labour ( I don't vote for them myself) but that's not the point. Musk is bankrolling Advance UK , as he doesn't like Reform anymore,

I see you have business interests in the UK, so are they too socialist for you?

They're going to be out anyway because of their continued capitulation to bullshit right-wing narratives. Sure, you can say they've seen off the Tories that way, but they've also opened to door to Reform who I suppose people can sense believe in what they're doing more than Labour do, unfortunately.

It was complete mystery why they made such ridiculous promises about tax rises in their manifesto ...... inexperience is not enough to explain it.

I‘m not “intent on destroying labour” and also, I am British. You don’t stop being interested in your country of birth just because you live somewhere else. Also, I don’t just “have business interests” - I run a business employing 14 people and have hundreds of U.K. customers and suppliers. I feel like I have a vested interest in the U.K. being as successful as possible - as well as a desire not to see what is a really great country with so much going for it, just get worse and worse.

Totally agree. They painted themselves into such a difficult position with this promise. They didn’t even need to do it, they’d have been voted in anyway.