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?

Yep that's about it in a nutshell.

I have a very faint hope that Labour knowing that they are not going to be elected go out with a "best interest of the UK bang" and make the necessary spending cuts and tax cuts needed to grow the economy. However like the Tories that would make them unelectable for many years to come.

In reality I know that they will go out with a what's in the "best interest of the Labour Party" by increasing taxes, slowing the economy thereby needing more tax rises and so on in a doom loop handing over a shattered economic situation in 2029.

It’s Labour though they won’t go for austerity and tax cuts. If that’s what people want then it’d have to be another party.

So here's the problem, if Governments borrow money and spend it then it does create a short term economic boost but the increased Government debt and interest payments and higher interest rates then create a medium/ long term drag on the economy.

On the other hand austerity and tax cuts creates a short term economic hit as Government spending and subsidies disappear. But in the medium/ long term it creates an economic boost through expanding businesses because of less tax and lower interest rates.

Because Governments are only elected for 5 years their preference has always been for short term gain in exchange for long term pain.

Blair was a natural leader and politician. Starmer is neither. He should have stuck to being a human rights lawyer.

We have just gone through 14 years of austerity, it never really ended. Far more debt, everything broken, no growth, low productivity, record numbers of people waiting for NHS and not working and to top it all, high cost of living pushing more people into debt or no confidence to spend and huge levels of poverty.. I don't see the medium/long term economic boost here?

Starmer showed good leadership when he ran the DPP, I’m pretty sure the staff in that department didn’t wander about doing as they pleased. It’s not too late to start running a tight ship in the parliamentary party, he needs to employ those skills again.

Home secretary Theresa May even took Sir Keir out to dinner to thank him for his service, the book says, while the then attorney general Dominic Grieve described the soon-to-be Labour MP as “one of the most successful directors of recent years” at his leaving party.

Well, yes I agree.

There are no quick fixes. The rot started under Blair and was ramped up by the Tories.

There is no spare cash for government to bankroll investment so it has to come from the private sector. Labour stymied that in their first six months with employer NI and the increase in minimum wage. Small businesses are not able to invest in the economy so unemployment is rising.

I’m not saying wages don’t need to go up but the minimum wage is growing faster than other salaries and the gap is narrowing. That makes no sense.

It WAS ending then we got bloody Covid. I could weep - austerity was declared over in September 2019, spending went up, 3 sodding months and we got the fucking virus

That’s not remotely the same as corralling a load of idiotic backbenchers who are wet behind the ears yet think they know everything. It takes an entirely different skill set.

He’s a technocrat not a leader.

Yes running a civil service department means those underneath you HAVE to do what you say as employees. Backbenchers are not employees

I think it needs exactly the same skill set. He’s got it but appears not to be using it.

The electorate voted those Labour MPs in, of course they’re going to behave like Labour. It’s not going to mean austerity and tax cuts.

In what way is it the same skill set?

According to political journalists, he’s only recently started eating with them in the MPs dining room. He had to be told to do that by a new advisor.

You - or someone - said he had no leadership skills. Demonstrably he does. I’m never going to convince you so it’s a waste of time arguing.

I said he wasn’t a natural leader. That’s not the same thing as having no skills.

Fine to head a department of civil servants, not someone who can get hundreds of backbenchers on board with his idea for the future and take them with him on his journey. For a start, he would need to have an idea of the future he wants for Britain which he clearly doesn’t.

No, you won’t convince me of something that there’s not much evidence of. I’d love to see what you’re seeing.

But spending never really increased to anything near that was needed in order to fix what they broke and the spending was mainly to deal with covid, not our infrastructure, our nhs, nor productivity, only thing that increased was debt, granted a wallop because of covid but it was already still going up. Years and years of austerity and we literally suffered for it for no significant gain. Was it worth it?

I think had we been in a healthier position, esp true of the NHS, the UK would've weathered covid much better. It's widely thought that austerity under the tories did not work, it was destructive to us as a country on far too many levels.

Well no because they were only 3 months in. If Covid hadn’t happened, what would things be like now? We can only speculate.

Austerity was not financially destructive. The alternative was far worse.

Do you know of a country or an example where austerity really really worked as intended? And at the end of it, the country was thriving and services great?

Second austerity, it was named by think tanks and economic experts to describe the tories from after covid until the day they were voted out.

Austerity has never been proven to work afaik, and is known to squash growth which is financially destructive. That's not as bad as the alternative... Certainly not helped by the billions wasted by our last gov either.

PS, the spending proposed afaik was not enough to keep the decimated services going, let alone fix them. So spending was minimal to what was needed.

I don’t understand your point. I’m not advocating austerity.

Beg your pardon, wrong person quoted :-)

It’s not supposed to produce great services. It’s supposed to rebalance and grow the economy to the extent we can afford great services.

It’s not like running a household. Austerity is more damaging in the long run than it is restorative for the reasons we’re seeing now.