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?

Yes why would you make it worse with the NI policy?

How do you judge a new government’s performance without comparing it with the previous one?

My post wasn’t about the performance of the last government. I was correcting a poster who keeps claiming growth is the highest in the G7.

But to answer your question, you set a benchmark and measure from there. Since Labour has been in power, unemployment has risen. Under the previous government, it was in decline.

Its pretty clear that the only reason you & others don't like the comparison is because it shows Labour in a slightly better light than you'd like.

I wonder if you go through life never comparing what you had with what you have now?

How do you think inflation is calculated or any type of growth? or your current fav, the pub trade & job losses?

Its a simple comparison.

You ve now done it again, attributing something to me i never said, i never claimed highest growth, i said among the highest, another simple detail that you struggle with.

You can bet your bottom dollar the comparisons with the previous government would be endless if this one was doing significantly worse. It’s most inconvenient that it isn’t.

Absolutely, its very blatant.

I think we have all noticed that neither main party has actually been a success. So its fairly irrelevant.

It was the highest in early 2024 it’s not now.

“Among the highest” is still quite far from the truth which is the lowest in the G7 (per capita).

Stop making comparisons to the previous Govt they don't count.

Growth in early 2025 was also the highest its been.

The UK economy grew by 0.7% in Q1 2025, a stronger-than-expected performance that was driven by increases in the services, production, and construction sectors. This marked the highest quarterly growth in over a year and outperformed many forecasts. The growth also meant that UK real GDP was 1.3% higher than in the same quarter of 2024

Even AI uses comparisons, how dare they!!!

Shall i take that as an apology for you making things up that i never said?

September was a contraction. Reeves and co were pretty quiet on that. It’s not fast growing at all.

Flipping heck, feel like I’ve stumbled into a year 4 playground.

Who said it was growing fast? no one.

You re cherry picking a single month, Q3 was 0.1 positive, as you earlier made the comparison to Q1 under Sunak - in Q3 and Q4 in 2023, he gave us a recession.

Yes many children make stuff up too, as do some "adults" though at least most children don't do it maliciously.

You are on MN though remember? I dont think anyone cares that much about arguing with strangers to make things up "maliciously". Or do you know better? Perhaps you do make things up "maliciously".

Exactly this. The main parties do exactly what is happening on this thread. It’s a blame game about what’s gone before rather than crafting a viable, sustainable and long term solution. I’m sure there are good ideas on both sides of the house but because of the current political system we never get that balance or pragmatism.

Well, its not a thread about what Reeves could do or whether Badenoch has better ideas & many posters on here are not interested in giving Reeves or the Govt a chance.

Its all about how terrible she is, without any form of balance whatsoever from her critics.

Starmer dares to go to a G7 meeting and thats all wrong too.

I think Reeves had no choice but to raise taxes, the amount of issues this country has are huge, not least in Health and Defence.

Whatever taxes she increased, there would be down sides, has she done everything right? no of course not, i think the WFA, then its reversal to 35k pa and possibly the Farms IHT are bad judgement calls.

Some of the net zero stuff has to go as well but it needs to be done with thought, a lot of money and jobs are already invested.

I'd be more than happy to discuss ways forward, instead of this constant "Reeves is terrible/Labour even worse" rubbish.

Consequences of Reeves policy

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2n215nqvyo.amp

They've had a chance.
All they've done is make things worse.

Whataboutery doesn't get anyone anywhere. Many of us have been very clear about what she should do, some people just don't want to hear it.

You can't float or kite fly or appear on TV to suggest 1001 tax rises whilst also leaking that benefits bill is to rise.

Borrowing is up, cost of borrowing is up, unemployment up, rate of small businesses closing is up, cost of benefits bill astronomically high, retail sales down, consumer confidence down, food and energy prices continuing to rise, inflation high etc. These are ALL things created by Labour. Not Tories, Labour.

They refuse to do what is needed ie cutting spending. So all that's left is more and more tax rises which in turn depresses the economy further as people cut personal spending further.

People are annoyed because she has made ideological choices that aren’t good for the country as a whole and are slowing growth and killing jobs.

Not everyone thinks”austerity” was the problem. Some of us think over regulation and an unproductive public sector are the problem and we resent being taxes to the point of appropriation to double down on bloat.

Yep more blame game.... do you ever stop?

Borrowing is up, cost of borrowing is up, unemployment up, rate of small businesses closing is up, cost of benefits bill astronomically high, retail sales down, consumer confidence down, food and energy prices continuing to rise, inflation high etc

Compared to what?

I could point to many of those being considerably higher in the very recent past.

Not everyone thinks”austerity” was the problem.

The majority of economists do.

It’s why the the pledge to make the last budget a one off tax hike can’t be kept.

Really? Not all economists are left wing. Just the ones you read.