Is the Chancellor about to crash the economy?

[Startingagainandagain]

I will start by saying I voted Labour, but I am increasingly concerned about what the government has done so far.

Today there are warning that food prices could shoot up, the pound is going down, there were big jitters on the bonds market and government borrowing is higher than planned.

More generally Reeves seems to have spooked businesses and they have no will to expand or employ more people.

I agreed that the Tories left a total mess.

But Labour seems to just go from bad to worse and I am really starting to wish she could be replaced by someone more competent to restore some confidence.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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 😩

”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 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!

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?

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.

Quite.

'@SharpOpalNewt · Yesterday 22:58
Another thread on this. Mumsnet should look at where all these threads trying to destablise the UK are coming from.'

For goodness sake....

I don't understand why anyone who is concerned about the economy is now deemed to be a foreign bot.

To answer your question I live in that most foreign of places: Kent...

I am worried because I have to remortgage this year and I would like to move to a new job.

The job market is dire and I very concerned mortgage rates will shot up again.

I absolutely want the Labour government to succeed but they need to start looking competent and restore some hope amongst the daily doom and gloom.

There is no shame in Starmer holding his hand and saying that they have made some mistakes and starting to run a tighter ship.

That could start by sacking the Chancellor and having someone in place who has some real, solid financial and economic experience.

I am also so disappointed that so far there has been no attempt to curb utility companies profits and to get more tax revenue in by taxing big corporations correctly.

Everything has fallen on people on average wages like me.

The thing is despite the Tories major wobble with the Truss budget, we were starting to see green shoots of some growth and confidence in the UK from investors. The labour budget was very sharp and ambitious but markets don't respond well when there is no clear plan for growth for business. They won't get a second term sadly - when real change starts to happen and trickle into every day life.

If you believe that, you will believe anything.

This in spades! - No one is confronted any more for poor performace in case of hurting peoples feelings or they go off sick for a duvet day to rebalance ones equilibrium! The real world is harsh - wish it were different though 🤔

I guess the question is what’s worse. One huge mistake that is called out and then a series of changes made. Or a series of mistakes that aren’t admitted to and compounded by more mistakes and obfuscation to the point that it isn’t possible to unpick and correct the original mistake?

it’s reported in The Times today that Reeve has asked all Ministers to review their policies and instructed them to “cease anti growth measures”. Which, if true is ironic as it’s her polices and measures that are anti growth!

At least the Tories had the decency to resign when they really fucked up. With these Labour bunch everyone knows they are incompetent from the PM to Reeves, lammy, Rayner, Philips, but they are so thick skinned and stubborn.

Yes it was overturned quickly

What will do the same with Reeves, Starmer and co?

They can’t see the problems they’ve caused

We are selling up too. And my db and IL’s who are LL’s.

It’s popularity politics - no thought given to the future problems they are causing and exacerbation of existing ones. There are homeless people on our high street now (never seen this in 20 years in our MC area).

Dh is an economist and he’s pretty aghast at what they’ve done. Shit’s gonna hit the fan!

They can but they're too stubborn to admit they were wrong. Reeves either needs to resign or be removed - the sooner the bettter to halt the catastropic decline in the economy.

Truss was the only premier recently that has had a plan for growth.

Yes it was very poorly laid out - it never actually made it to the execution stage - but at least it was a plan and many people feel it would have worked. Sometimes you have to try something different.

Everyone else including Starmer has done nothing but hope and pray.

The current chancellor should return from China and sort it out!
( doing what I'm not sure , but there is clearly a crisis )

This.

The “but they are undoing the damage of the tories” is really getting old now.

You have swallowed the cool aid and are sticking with it more like.