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?

Mmmmm Growth, whilst low, is a lot higher than when the Tories were in, compare their last 16months with Labours first 16months - they gave us a recession in the winter of 2023.

But i do love the mental gymnastics the right wing posters on here will go through to criticise Labour.

Btw we were told tax receipts would reduce because of her policies, i believe 1 or 2 posters have said similar on this thread too.

I am not saying the Tories did a good job. Far from it. Growth totally stalled under them. I'm also not saying that Labour inherited anything other than a mess. However, they told us all during the election that they were the 'grown ups' who knew what they were doing and that everything had been costed blah blah blah. Their manifesto made it clear that growth was their number 1 priority. How then do you explain the employer NICs increase?

And with regards to tax receipts, we may well see the impact of her policies still to come. Employment is down, the jobs market is weakening.

Starmer also said that it would take time to clear up the mess and he expected his government to be unpopular while they were doing it.

Even he must see that many of their decisions have been wrong-footed. It's possible to take time to clear up a mess left for you, but also show that you know what you are doing and that you're headed in the right direction. That's not happening. That's the problem. That's why Labour and Starmer are so low in the polls.

He needs his own Falklands to get himself out of this - I wonder what that will be?

Yes you re dead right about energy costs, correctly pointing out we have the most expensive energy in the Developed world.

Your chart is from 2023, so another mess Labour have to sort out & a very expensive mess.

Absolutely crazy that we pay Norway to extract our own oil and gas from the north sea. I don't know nearly enough about the sector to comment on the suspension of licenses, but on the face of it, we seem to be digging our own graves. And really hammering business in the meantime.

God knows where all the affordable electricity is going to come from any time soon.

No party is doing well, not even close, even Reform, according to the latest YouGov poll are only on 27%.

The electorate is choosing to spread their votes across 5 parties now.

We'll need to change how we vote or we will have 70% of the electorate v unhappy.

I hope not. Rather they were out than that.

I listened to a podcast on this recently, the main reason we have expensive Electricity is due to all the extra net work costs, associated with connecting in the solar and windfarms we have.
Plus of course its tied to gas prices, we basically hike 'lecky to have cheaper gas, that was fine when electricity came from coal but now much of it is "green" - good luck anyone trying to change that.

Also said NS oil gas is very expensive to extract.

Yes i agree its madness to import fossil fuel products when we have them here.

This is very true. The Greens are also growing in popularity quite rapidly. We will end up in a Denmark style politics with endless coalitions.

He needs his own Falklands to get himself out of this - I wonder what that will be?

I got ripped to shreds when I pointed out how unpopular Thatcher was early in her first term and the Falklands saved her.

I agree and I think that's well known. A useful war.

It certainly helped her get re-elected, although I believe it's widely accepted that Labour were also in a shambles at the time and not a realistic prospect for government.

I don’t think the men who fought it would agree with you that it was “useful”. Mine most definitely wouldn’t.

It’s a bit much to want it to save a politician’s arse though. Not you, but some might have been keen.

Thankfully the coalition of the winning poll bump has died and Starmer has put away the boots on the ground and planes in the air banners, and photo ops dressed up in military kit has finished.

But we wont, thats the whole point, we'll end up like we have now, only worse, with a single party in power, large majority but 70% or 80% of the population hates them.

Its no way to govern a country.

I can't imagine any party, even with FPTP, can get even a shallow majority at the next election. I don't mean coalitions in the Danish sense where they have proportional representation, I mean through deals to form a working majority.

I think we might well end up with a coalition in 2029 unless things change quite radically. There will be a huge amount of tactical voting.

Well, Labour got around 33% of the vote, approx 23% of total electorate.

A party only has to win in their area, doesn't matter what the turn out is or their overall % of the vote.

Yes i agree they'll be tactical voting.

But its probable atm to be a Reform or a Reform/Tory coalition - God help us.

Oh you know what I mean!

I did predict someone would take that literally. And they did!🤣

Reform for foreign policy and immigration control.

Conservatives for monetary control.

Labour out because:

They spend money the country doesn’t have.

Higher taxes for the wealthy means they leave and reduces the total tax take. Even Tony Blair advised not to take more tax from the wealthy.

Liberal democrats out because their immigration policy is that if friends and relatives of immigrants want to come to the UK they should be allowed to do so.

Greens out because they want no borders anywhere. Plus I am not convinced that hypnosis can enlarge women’s breasts.

They spend money the country doesn’t have.

Didn’t Hunt give away £10 billion in NI cuts without the funding for it? How short memories are.

@Blossomtoes

Life is lived going forwards, not backwards.

The Conservatives lost because people were not satisfied with their performance. This has been acknowledged by conservatives such as Graham Stuart, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Kevin Hollinrake on BBC Question Time.

I voted Labour in the 2024 general election based on their manifesto promises:

Taxes would not increase

The reverse has happened and those in the lowest incomes are the hardest hit.

Trafficking gangs would be smashed

Not happened. The one in and one out is a farce. One who was returned to France re-entered soon afterwards.

The current Home Secretary is considering paying illegal migrants thousands to leave the UK which will only encourage them to re-enter multiple times to keep collecting the thousands.

The UK will neither rejoin the customs union nor the single market

However, Starmer is in discussions about Brexit reset.

Taxes would not increase

It was actually income tax, NI and VAT, none of which have increased for employees.

Trafficking gangs would be smashed

Nobody knows whether they have or what work is being done behind the scenes.

The UK will neither rejoin the customs union nor the single market

And is hasn’t. Sadly.

Do you agree with the employers' NICs increase and do you think it has been good for stimulating growth in the economy which was one of the key pledges made by Labour during the election campaign.