Rachel from accounts has crashed the economy

[Almn0etd]

So borrowing costs are now even higher than when Liz Truss was around.

The economy is well and truly cooked and in a far worse shape now that Rachel accounts is in charge.

Why isn’t this dominating the news cycle? Because it’s Labour.

The Tories were atrocious. Labour are an indescribable disaster for this country, surpassing the lowest of the low bars. Cue Labour apologists who don’t mind being made poorer and having the country destroyed, as long it’s Labour doing it to them.

Yeah you 100% lost me at “Rachel from Accounts”

Misogyny is not clever even if you don't like the woman 🙄

This! No one ever said Rishi from Accounts or the like.

Seeing as neither the private school VAT policy or the farming IHT changes have been around for more than five minutes, where's your evidence that they've "wrecked" anything?

You didn't? With the absolute mess left by the Tories, DP and myself totally expected it to get worse before it gets better. Neither voted Labour although did hope they would beat the Tories as the only real opposition. They can't fix the mess that has been left without things getting worse for a while - the Tories really ran the country and its economy into the ground.

Increasing employers national insurance has wiped growth in all sectors. Agricultural inheritance tax has wrecked that sector. VAT on private schools is actually costing more revenue than it will generate.
Welcome to the politics of envy. Talk about climbing the ladder then pulling it up behind them.

where should they be raising money from instead? Nobody wants to pay more tax.

Am I the only one that expected things to get worse before they got better?

It feels as though alot of the population felt Labour were going to come in with a magic wand and swoosh all the financial and systemic rot away overnight.

I understand that you can't make any meaningful quick improvements, I'd just like to see any evidence -by any metric - which demonstrates that the economy hasn't got worse since July?

Because, I'm not an economist, but I see that unemployment is up, that the construction industry has lost momentum, manufacturing output is down, that the retail industry had a disappointing Christmas killing off any hope that the poor growth in autumn was a blip, borrowing cost are up and we are potentially about to lose all the 'headroom' requiring Reeves to break fiscal rules if the OBR's assessment is that this is all rather permanent.

This isn't what growth looks like. But maybe someone could tell me how all this is the beginnings of some great turnaround that I am just too impatient or ignorant to see?

Well, for a start the economy was growing until 6 months of deliberate talking it down by the incoming government, followed by a budget that included £40 billion of tax rises which directly reduce growth. So, doing nothing would have led to a better outcome, higher growth and more tax revenue.

Then at a micro level, for the pay rises that they did knee-jerk into giving, if they’d negotiated some changes in working practices to increase productivity that’d help. Again, increasing output and tax revenue.

At a macro policy level, instead of Ed Moribund crowing out private sector investment in renewables with public money, diverting that investment into new sectors that would actually drive innovation and growth would be helpful. We’ve got some great tech and biotech industries - supercharging them would deliver new growth, rather than just swapping private money for public.

Then you could make the UK an attractive place to start up, grow and then sell a business. Since that would drive innovation, employment, professional services, tax revenues and GDP. Or you could do the reverse, and stifle growth by tinkering with IHT and CGT.

Then of course you could encourage private sector savings and pension provision, to make people less dependent on the state and channel money / investment into UK markets. Or, you could discourage it.

I’m not an economist, and my CV has never claimed I am, but I think all of the above would help deliver growth and increased tax revenues, and certainly wouldn’t actively hinder it in the way this government deliberately has chosen to do for ideological reasons.

By growing the economy, like one of the abandoned pledges said they would :)

So is Dora the Explorer.

I wonder why the Tories didn’t try this instead of leaving such a disaster for Labour to pick up the pieces?

The issue is that the budget she enacted doesn’t contain any policies that will lead to growth at any time. Despite that being what we need and despite Labour promising to grow the economy.

As I said growth stopped after the Financial crash and then we had austerity with low interest rates masking poor growth & inflated assets. Add Brexit in & any growth is a long way off.

Well Colin from accounts was quite cool.

Well Jeremy had a name that rhymed with cunt so he had a whole load of problems all of his own.' Rachel from accounts' or 'Lego hair ' are fairly tame compared with that

which demonstrates that the economy hasn't got worse since July?

I think it’s going to get worse but I believe that would have happened under any other party.

Isabel! how ARE you? It’s been too long.

I don’t think its sexist in the slightest it could equally have been “Dan from Accounts” (or indeed Kwasi)

Yes, exactly.

Some of it was happening, which might be why the economy was growing, for some (increasing NI, crowing out private sector money) doing nothing would have been better, and for others (investing in tech) I have no idea. Because as well as not being an economist I’m neither a politician, a Tory or an ex government minister. I can however see that this government has chosen to deliberately make some things worse.

I’m a long time Labour voter but Reeves’ budget was a combination of ideology and inexperience.

This.
You just show yourself up rather than get any point across.

@Tryingtokeepgoing we don't know what doing nothing would have done, but growth wasn't spectacular under the previous government, so it's improbable that keeping all the same policies would have magically had a different impact under labour. In fact, most of what you've suggested has also been tried and found to not be very effective.

By changes in working practices presumably mean making people work harder for the same money? Given the burden of long term sickness on the economy, it seems unlikely intensifying work in this way would do anything other than drive more people off sick.

Public investment doesn't crowd out private investment unless you're writing a GCSE economics essay. The sort of long term patient capital that governments provide is actually far more conducive to spurring genuine innovation than fickle private capital is.

IHT is actually one of the taxes which has the smallest impact on incentives to grow a business, because the person founding and growing the business doesn't pay it, their offspring do.

Saving more reduces consumption, so encouraging people to do so would be unlikely to increase economic growth.

Please can someone e plain to me why Rachel from Accounts is misogyny?

Genuine question. I'm interested.

Private businesses also don’t have a good track record of investing instead preferring to pay out large dividends when the times re good.

Anytime I see any post on social media using stupid nicknames for politicians I immediately discount the person posting them as being unable to think deeply or for themselves, and ignore whatever they have to say.

(See also: 'wake up people' and any mention of sheep or snowflakes.)