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?

So do I. Ken Clarke on QT last night spoke sense. Someone has to make these hard choices. It’s her turn now and she must.

He is a pronatalist. His party don't support him and neither do Reform voters.

Should any government, decide policy according to polling?

Everyone associated with child poverty says that removing the cap, would reduce poverty and save money in the longer term.

Ask these people if the 4x daily social care visits their Gran gets should be cut to 2 visits?
Or that their local school should cut teachers and increase class sizes?

The AE dept should shut at weekends?

Polling often get the answers the pollster wants dependent on how the question is phrased.

I thought it was all “fully funded and fully costed” and last year’s budget tax and borrowing hike was a one off?

Why the need for ‘hard choices’?

Ken Clarke was a decent chancellor and does speak a lot of sense, far less confrontational than our present politicians.

I think she has to increase taxes, the world is an uncertain place, we have a huge amount of defence spending to fund, not known pre GE and she needs the headroom for world events, not least Russia defeating Ukraine, imho a distinct possibility.

No, that's just not how democracy works.

If you want to lift the cap then you say that's what you're going to do so people can decide if they agree with this when they vote. If it is definitively the right thing to do then it should be easy to make the moral and financial case.

What you can't do is lie about having no plans to lift the cap in 2023 (yes Starmer did say this) , don't mention it in your manifesto and then just a year after getting into power decide that you can unilaterally lift the cap because it's the 'right' thing to do.

This has been rehashed so many times of the two child cap threads but basically child poverty is an economic measure comparing a household's income to the median in the country. Lifting a child out of poverty can be done by simply can be done by handing the parents loads of cash. Whether this means the child sees any of that money or their lived experience and outcomes will be different is a much muckier picture. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that there is far more at play with these families than financial poverty and culture, education and attitudes play a more important role in outcomes Vs money alone.

Also YouGov is a very trustworthy pollster. You are accusing them of basically having an agenda which I really don't think they have. Look at Mumsnet polls on the issue and the results tally. People don't want this.

What she could do is look at ways to bring more money into the system instead of continually placing extra tax pressure on the people who already pay. Recent figures show about 8.2 million people are claiming Universal Credit, and nearly 49% of them have no work requirements meaning they’re in full-time education, over state pension age, caring for a baby under one, or assessed as having no realistic prospect of work. That’s around four million people who aren’t contributing through tax right now but are still receiving support. Yes, circumstances change and many will have paid in before, but there are also people who never have and on top of that, the government now wants to lift the two-child benefit cap. Given the current financial situation, that simply doesn’t look affordable unless clear rules or conditions are put in place.

She could also start by sticking to the promises her party made. Labour has a reputation for raising taxes, and they made a very loud point during the election campaign that they wouldn’t raise income tax. A lot of voters took that seriously. So any backlash they’re facing now is, in many ways, of their own making. I don’t feel especially sorry for her, and it does raise the question of whether she’s actually suited to the role.

You’re right re YouGov. It typically delivers the most favourable numbers for Labour anyway.

No idea what she's to do, but I ain't holding my breath for anything that will change this:

'Wealth in the UK is highly concentrated, with the wealthiest 10% of households holding nearly 60% of total wealth, while the bottom 50% hold less than 5%. The top 1% own about 23% of all wealth, and the wealthiest 10% have a wealth of over £1.2 million, compared to £16,500 or less for the least wealthy 10%. Wealth inequality is more severe than income inequality, primarily driven by property and private pension wealth, and has increased since the 1980s.'

Meanwhile, despite the facts, there's an ever-increasing collective hysterical screech from the self-interested of MN who insist the state we're in is all the fault of the poor and vulnerable.

It’s a tough job but I think she’s doing it badly.

What makes me despair:

This govt was meant to be all about growth. It’s desperately needed. There’s reasonable cross-party consensus on major things we need: housing, tax reform, energy costs. And with a massive majority they should be able to do some unpopular pro-growth stuff too.

Instead they endlessly talk not about growth, but raising tax and cutting spending. But seem incapable of actually doing either, so it’s all for nothing. Destroy business confidence and political capital, making no progress on tax and spend and totally neglecting the real urgent issue they said their government was going to be all about.

I'll start at the end off your post - i said answers will often depend on how the question is phrased, that is a very known aspect of polling, i made no mention of YouGov, which is a reputable organisation, they asked a black and white question & got a b&w answer.

On democracy, a manifesto is not a contract, its a wish list, a list of aims and ambitions, so SureStart wasn't in Blairs manifesto, yet proved highly popular, both parties over the years have included plenty in their manifestos that have never happened.

Do you think the Tories lied because they didn't promise to introduce the 2 child cap in their manifesto in 2015 but did so in their first budget?

Your argument against lifting the cap, applies to reducing it to 1 child or even no children, because all it is doing is throwing money at a family.

This @surreygirly not to mention that we are STILL paying for it both in terms of the agreed payments we're making to the EU on a monthly basis and will continue to, as well as the cost to GDP which at a conservative estimate has cost us 4%. It may not sound like much, but when you consider the total wealth of the UK, it is enormous.

Growth has escaped all major economies in Europe, i don't think its thats easy to achieve.
I do think our rush to go electric has wrecked European car manufacturing, opening it up to the Chinese and done nothing for the environment or growth.

Same could be said for many Green economic policies.

The media has got it in for her and for Starmer. Whatever they do they will get negative press.
I don't understand the hatred people have for them while Farage gets away with terrible things as did Johnson.. But once a negative narrative starts it's hard to break out of it.

They’re really not helping themselves by being clueless.

The problem is trying to squeeze money from those already squeezed to death.
They need to sort out the spending across the board and then once they have shown they can save money people might be more inclined to pay more tax if they can see it being used appropriately. Just now it's pissing in the wind.
Labour are rejecting anything which means their supporters will object to.

Why mention that it depends how questions are phrased then when you admit that YouGov answered a clear question and got back a clear answer? It's totally irrelevant.

The Tory 2015 manifesto did include a pledge to introduce a two child cap and that's what they subsequently did. That's how democracy should work.

No political party is suggesting that there should be a one child or no child cap. If they did then this would be a big deal and I absolutely would expect it to be included in a manifesto.

The case for removing the two child cap is the same as it was before the election. Nothing practically has changed that means it must happen now and didn't need to happen then. This is why it doesn't fall into the 'shit happens' category where necessity dictates policy change. This is all ideological and purposely deceptive. They didn't tell the electorate their plans because they knew it would be unpopular. It's massively undemocratic and the fact you're trying to argue otherwise is really shocking.

Of course it depends how the question is phrased thats obvious but it also doesn't take away from my point that Govts are not bound in any shape or form by opinion polls.

Just looked through their 2015 manifesto on welfare and benefits and the only cut is on DLA and maximum household benefits.

There is also plenty in there that never happened.

What was wrong with the YouGov question on the benefit cap?

It’s a simple should it be abolished or kept, how would you phrase it?

Oh it’s a mess for sure. If they didn’t have a clear plan it would probably have been a good idea to talk to their MPs and prospective MPs (and listen…)before hand. Otherwise they’ve been elected on an apparently fully costed mandate they are unable or unwilling to deliver, despite their huge majority.

The negative narrative only sticks if you’re not delivering. I lose track of the number of pledges, milestones, missions, re-sets this government has talked about in the last 16 months. But it’s just that. All talk and no delivery. Or, being charitable, they are awful communicators and are doing an excellent job…

But if one can’t communicate, being an MP and leader is probably not for you. Especially if you’re then going to spend more time out of the country and away from parliamentary questions than other prime minster in living memory. The cynical would say he’s paving his away for a post premiership career already…

I don't think you can deliver too much inside 16months, especially when there is very little money.
Starmer did make it clear it would take 2 terms to turn the UK around.

I think their mistakes were from the outset, expenses and not reversing the NI cut.
The press jumped on this and its been down hill all the way, i've been listening to BBC and SKY saying Reeves u-turns on tax increases.. uh?

When did she announce these tax increases? Reeves never said she'd increases taxes, didn't even mention income tax vat or NI.... its unfair & very damaging to the country.
However, i ve no clue what her speech was about, its puzzled everyone i work with but she didn't mention taxes.

Given the Tariffs and the UK getting a better deal than others, its just as well he went to Washington, he has also got a better trading relationship with the EU.
NATO is also pretty important too.

Do you expect any PM to be sat in no10 during times of trouble? Johnson did well getting supporting for Ukraine, he didn't do that sat in London.

The fact they keep trying to take tough action, then backing down when people complain, makes me even less confident that the government knows what its doing.

This end of a 4-5 year parliament is not the time to make friends, now is the time to take unpopular decisions that need to be made. A year before the the election is the time to give out the treats and appeasements.

If tax needs to go up, put the case firmly, succinctly and truthfully, and then carry it through. They've got the majority to get it done, just do it.

This shilly shallying just makes them look weak and incompetent. And that's what the markets hate more than anything.

Real change takes a lot of time. I have worked on policy in Government and it can take a year or more to get a Bill.through Parliament and that is without factoring in all the policy work that has to happen before. And delivery takes a lot longer. Change doesn't happen overnight
But whether you believe it or not a lot of pledges have been fulfilled or are in progress.
https://fullfact.org/government-tracker/

This tracker has been complied independently and shows

18 pledges achieved
18 on track
22 in progress
3 off track
1 not kept
6 unclear.
I think that is pretty good.
They did say before the elections that it would take two terms to effect real change

This exactly. They are a complete shambles.