Rachel Reeves can’t win, can she?

[anothervoter]

After days and days of negative press and chatter about income tax going up, complaints on Mumsnet and across the media, today’s reports are that idea might be dropped and now she’s being accused of rattling the markets and making the cost of borrowing increase.

Honestly, genuine question- what can she do?

People would just be happy with a competent government with a workable plan.

Definitely. A clear plan and some consistency would make a huge difference, whoever’s in charge.

Reeves can’t win because of Labours position. They promised not to raise income tax , national interest and VAT.
They tried to reform welfare but the backers opposed it.
Labour can’t possibly just rely on growth alone which is what they are preying for.

They got themselves into this mess and a result- Reeves can’t win.

It seems to me that Kenneth Clark is absolutely spot on - people want Scandinavian services while paying US levels of tax. No chancellor can win because it’s impossible.

The UK’s problem is that we take forever to deliver even the simplest projects.

The A66 for example, quote :
“Jonathan Oppenheimer, a South African businessman and veteran of De Beers and Anglo American, both of which his family built, said extraordinarily slow decision-making and planning rules meant it is not worth putting money into the UK.
He cited as evidence the dualling of the A66, a crucial route between England’s east and west coasts, running from Teesside to Workington in Cumbria.
“So long as the UK takes 30 years to do a nine-month project, it’s uninvestable,” Mr Oppenheimer told the Bloomberg Africa Business Summit”

Source: The Daily Telegraph today (shoot me! I can’t link because of paywall), “a job that should’ve taken nine months has dragged on for almost 30 years”.
That’s why investors won’t! The system is slow, layered, and obsessed with process and nothing gets finished.

The state is obsessed with paperwork, consultations and committees, which is expensive, but nothing happens. It’s as of delay is rewarded.

Until government can make decisions quickly and deliver, no amount of money or tax breaks will make any difference.

No one can say yes and get on with it, because everyone is terrified of being blamed if something goes wrong.

Over time, the bureaucracy gets bigger, the rules get tighter, nothing gets done and UK productivity falls.

I just don’t believe that high taxation is the right route in isolation. We will be in a constant doom loop - increase tax to cover deficits, leading to less growth and spending. Meaning more taxes and so on…

In my view (I’m sure not popular) we need to reduce spending. Tackle the (unsustainable) triple lock, pay disability benefits for those only with long term and chronic conditions and time limit job seekers allowance. Long term unemployment is terrible for the person and the economy, in both benefits paid and tax lost.

The difference is that BJ wasn't as supercillious and sanctamonious in opposition and didn't win on a platform of no tax rises and promise the earth.
You can argue as much as you like about how great Labour are but i think the over riding emotion from the public is dusappointment that they have been as chaotic as the Tories, astonishingly hypocritical and utterly inept. And none of that has anything to do with 'the black hole'.

@Kitte321 Welfare reform is necessary, we do need to reduce spending, goes without saying, but it won’t fix the problem that the UK can’t deliver anything on time or on budget. And therefore lacks productivity.

You don’t get growth from a system that takes 30 years to do a nine-month job. The problems are structural and the system is broken, not just the welfare system.

Boris Johnson was never in opposition.

Yes he did come in on a platform of no tax rises, VAT, NI and Income taxes, he promised not to raise any of them.

Boris Johnson's Guarantee

"We will get Brexit done in January and unleash the potential of our whole country.
‍
I guarantee:

Extra funding for the NHS, with 50,000 more nurses and 50 million more GP surgery appointments a year.

20,000 more police and tougher sentencing for criminals.

An Australian-style points-based system to control immigration.

Millions more invested every week in science, schools, apprenticeships and infrastructure while controlling debt.

Reaching Net Zero by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution.

We will not raise the rate of income tax, VAT or National Insurance""

A direct copy from their 2019 Manifesto - How many of these did he achieve?

None.

So it always make me laugh when pp go on about Labour and Net Zero or broken promises etc

What short memories.

& I ve never argued "Labour are Great" pls point to any post i ve said that?

As i said, Labour should be given much longer than 15months, tbh most pro Tories wrote them off within a day.

Yep. If the last £70bn tax and borrowing hike led to higher tax receipts Reeves and Starmer wouldn’t be facing having to overturn the last pledge not to raise taxes again.

So what was this 70bn used for?

btw tax receipts are up, hence the roll back on income taxes, though it was never announced in the first place.

UK tax receipts are currently up, reaching a near-record high in both annual and recent monthly figures. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) collected £858.9 billion in the 2024 to 2025 tax year, a 3.7% increase from the previous year.

Though i expect to be told this to be the result of Con policies!

And yet the doom spiral continues...

Well it does where you re concerned.

Inflation down too, 3.6% from the highs the Tories gave us of 11%, which get interest rates down too, 4% now, over 5% when Lab took office.

Though i expect to be told "external factors"

Agreed and in the words of Keir Starmer himself - you cannot tax your way to economic growth .

Yep. After pledging no more tax rises Reeves and Starmer are struggling with this budget.

Ikr both Reeves and Starmer have said this. I don’t think they get it though.

Yet tax receipts are at record highs.

Public investment in roads, rail, cheaper energy and defence spend can of course increase growth and boost the supply chain in related private industries.

I take it those who disagree, will support the ending of state supported childcare, paid for by taxes, as it clearly wont increase growth by getting parents back into FT work.

Churchill is is credited with saying "Can't tax your way to growth"

but as chancellor, thats exactly what he did, huge hikes in taxes, mostly for public works.

No you can't tax your way to growth. And using tax payers money to pay for roads does not create wealth. How can it??

The reality is higher taxation stifles growth. It removes incentives and takes money from the private sector so they are unable to invest in their own businesses. Businesses that create wealth and jobs.

We've been here before.

So how can a business grow without a transport network, such as roads? does the business build these themselves?

Transport links built, mean businesses follow.

What do you think a tax break is? its a form of public sector investment

As i explained to you earlier, we need both in a balanced economy, you don't seem able to accept any public sector role, even in health or education, its all about taxes.

Maybe but this is just one side of the coin. The budget problem isn’t just about raising money is it? It’s about how much the government commits to spending, and how expensive it is to service debt. It’s actually more worrying that receipts are where they are and yet we still can’t balance the books.

Im talking about wealth creation.

And no. A tax break is not a form of public investment. That assumes the state owns your money (which a socialist believes).
A capitalist believes you own your own money and the state takes tax.

The childcare point doesn’t follow. It’s about priorities in spending and I would absolutely prioritise a policy that allowed people to go to work and generate come through tax receipts.

Once the tax is taken, it then belongs to the state, there is no free will to refuse - to do as the electorate want them to do with it, told via the GE - called democracy, if the state wastes that money etc, they get voted out eg the "capitalist" Tories at the last GE.

I'll give you an example of how public investment increases "Wealth creation"

Govt puts money into a local tech college, produces trained young people who work in a large private sector employer, said employer works with college to tailor the courses.

Company grows etc etc.

The pp was saying that Public Investment doesn't create wealth, i'm giving an example of where it clearly does, which i assume pp would want removed in favour of more tax breaks for business?

Yes but the public sector is not making anything to sell or creating wealth by financial or legal services. Or exporting anything to be bought by other countries. And everything the public sector does has to be paid for by tax payers. The public sector can help support wealth creators (such as your example of a technical college). But it by definition does not "create wealth". So you can't tax your way to wealth. As you are just taking wealth out of the private sector and spending it on non wealth creating things.