to believe Rachel Reeves was crying because

[LargeDeviation]

1. she was upset when Lindsay Hoyle told her to keep her answers short

2. she had an argument with Keir Starmer (possibly about her keeping her job, or about how to handle the inevitable questions about the new £5.5bn per annum black hole) just before PMQs

3. Keir Starmer refused to say she would keep her job in front of the whole country. If he genuinely wanted her to stay, he would just say 'of course she's going to still be Chancellor' and that would be that.

4. she is under immense pressure because she knows she will have soon to breach her fiscal rules, she knows she is responsible for many of the decisions that will lead to that, and she knows the how serious the consequences of her failure will be. We have seen recently (even just today) how vicious the bond market can be.

In short, I believe she was crying because of professional pressures (understandable ones, though largely of her own making, and about which I have little sympathy) and not nebulous 'personal' reasons.

If her parent or partner or child or grandparent or pet is ill the natural thing is to just say 'sorry, a close relative is in hospital and my emotions got the better of me'. Everybody would understand. You don't need huge reams of evidence but you need to give the bare bones of an explanation. She is trying to style it out but we can all see through it.

I will apologise if I'm wrong but long experience shows that 'personal reasons' almost always means 'I'm skiving or jobhunting' when a colleague in the workplace uses it to excuse their time off.

I believe it means even less when uttered by a politican.

The same goes for all the “clever” nicknames for politicians from parties you don’t like.

Have never used a clever nickname.

Lots of people do. It’s not all about you.

But you were addressing your post to me.

The you was generic. 🙄

Of course it was 🙄

I think it’s more difficult to take seriously people who refer to ‘Rachel from Accounts’, or any of the other silly nicknames. It suggests a bias and a lack of ability to see nuance. Babes suggests neither of those things.

Britain’s public finances are in a “vulnerable” position, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has warned, with the cost of the pension triple lock to balloon by as much as £15bn a year.

The fiscal watchdog said Rachel Reeves’s financial buffer to meet her already-loose borrowing rules was wafer-thin, with the UK extremely vulnerable to economic shocks.

The Chancellor is under pressure to bring down Britain’s ballooning debt pile, with speculation mounting about tax rises and spending cuts in the autumn.

The UK’s long-term borrowing costs surged following the bleak OBR prognosis, jumping by the most of any major European economy and breaching the levels reached when Ms Reeves cried in the House of Commons last week.

Nothing there is a surprise to anyone except Rachel Reeves. Perhaps people will now understand why the markets reacted the way they did last week to her ridiculous performance instead of claiming it was a 'vote of confidence' in her.

100%.

It’s going to get bumpy…

I will happily call that out, too.

I wonder who is going to get scapegoated for this?8 year old prep school kids, farmers, pensioners, business owners, additional rate tax payers or is there another enemy of the people lurking out there?

People really went with this didn’t they. Who’s left

I hope I’m not right in this, but I suspect it’s going to be homeowners,

They’re starting on SEND kids now. Is there any depths that these won’t sink to.

They’re coming for the SEND children next. God forbid that a disabled child has a right to an education.

I am not a bleeding heart liberal who thinks that benefit fraud does not exist, or is negligible, or should be ignored. But I’m pretty sure that there are not legions of autistic kids swinging the lead in their EHCP’s.

It’s the Telegraph so no surprise they’ve massaged what the OBR actually said, which is that the UK is in a ‘relatively vulnerable’ position. And while the fiscal rules are part of the explanation for high debt levels, the OBR points to loosening of these since 2010. I don’t think the current Chancellor can be blamed for all of this.

Backtracking and fiscal promises have added to the problem but the actual speech also pointed out that a lot of the risk stems from structural changes like the ageing population - and previous shocks - pandemic, gas prices. The ‘good news’ is that life expectancy has declined so plenty of us (well, mostly the men) won’t be claiming their pension.

The UK faces “daunting” risks to the public finances as its soaring debt load leads to “substantial erosion” of its capacity to respond to future shocks, the independent budget watchdog has warned. The Office for Budget Responsibility said on Tuesday that efforts to put the UK on a more sustainable fiscal footing have met with only “limited and temporary” success in recent years. Underlying public debt, which is at its highest since the early 1960s, is set to rise further, the OBR warned. It added that addressing the issue had become “considerably more challenging” given low economic growth and rising interest rates.

FT.

This is precisely why productivity growth is collapsing. The productive taxpayers amongst us are reducing our efforts in the face of very high marginal tax rates on income from employment. And compounding all of this is a slice of unproductive working age slackers who simply do not want to work.

The OBR is actually under-stating the financial risks. The UK is basically insolvent if you take into account off balance sheet risks. Taxing the productive more will simply accelerate the decline because the unproductive will keep trying to extract more resources.

What a naive post when you look at the enormous number of pensioners using every service imaginable for multiple decades after retiring at 55.

Yes the chancellor does have a responsibility to end the triple lock, free passes, prescriptions for pensioners etc - will she? Not a chance. She is now vastly weakened and on the verge of collapse.

The kinds of cuts that are desperately needed now to avoid an economic disaster will never get past the thick Labour MPS that think moral superiority is more important than keeping the lights on.

We are absolutely screwed.

Oh sorry did you think I was serious about life expectancy? It is dropping like a rock but not quickly enough. Though the economic outlook will certainly hasten deaths from disease and despair, so there’s that too.

There are many things that ought to have been done differently, on that we agree, but I don’t lay the blame entirely at the door of the current Chancellor. And neither does the OBR. Part of the problem with the triple lock was the uncertainty. Massive changes to policy right now are the worst thing that could happen.

The most ridiculous thing in all of this is that the UK has creamed off lots of highly talented immigrants coming in via UK unis who then have contributed vastly into the coffers, not just with taxes, but via growth and yet the politicians are allowing the narrative to take hold that immigrants are a big drain. It is nonsense, certain types of immigrants are the complete opposite, absolutely essential. The successful European countries which are all in structural decline with falling birth rates will be those able to attract AND retain the best incoming talent.

But none of this is a new problem. I don’t disagree with a lot of what you say, but fundamentally growth is almost impossible in a country that doesn’t make anything. Where are our growth industries? There’s a huge investment needed in education, housing and transport to enable large chunks of the population to be more productive, but the narrative on this thread seems to be all about cuts. The welfare bill is unsustainable but the idea that it can be cut and people will magically get jobs and sustain them is risible. There needs to be targeted investment. Labour have an uphill battle with the right wing press and a broadly right wing electorate, and they have an identity crisis. But the roots of the crisis around us predate them by at least a decade and trace back to austerity.

How are these kids going to be motivated or enabled to contribute to economic growth? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg8r3vm4llo

Reeves doesn't want growth. She made that quite clear in the budget.

If growth is impossible, why has Rachel Reeves repeatedly claimed she has a strategy that will ensure economic growth?

That's what we'd all like to know !