Starmer & Reeves: The Blind Leading the Bankrupt

My reaction to Rachel Reeves' disastrous efforts at a reboot today...

We always knew that putting this Labour government in charge of the economy was like putting Count Dracula in charge of the nation’s blood supplies. I don't want to discount some of Labour’s achievements in power over the last hundred years, including the National Health Service, the minimum wage and Tony Blair's ability to balance a progressive agenda, with big investment public services, alongside aspiration and economic growth. But in power, overall, Labour have done more harm than good, most notably in 1970s, with Britain becoming the sick man of Europe, going to the International Monetary Fund with it begging bowl and out of control unions bankrupting the country, leading to the 1978 Winter of discontent, with regular blackouts, everyone on strike, rubbish not collected and even bodies in graveyards lying unburied. Socialism in action folks.

It was the Iron Lady Mrs T who rescued this country, first tackling inflation, then unemployment, and ultimately by 1987 transforming Britain into a global economic, military and diplomatic powerhouse. Unfortunately the Chancellor Rachel Reeves is less Iron Lady and more iron curtain, running a Number 11 operation that failed to notice socialism doesn't work. The aforementioned Tony Blair kept taxes down and actually banned the word “socialism” from his administration and rightly so. But it returned last October, with a disastrous budget which pissed off farmers, pensioners and aspirational families who send their kids to private school. And most egregiously, it was the tax raid on businesses which has taken economic growth from 0.7% in January, the highest in the G7, to 0.5 in July, still world beating, to 0.1% under Stalin and Reeves. Sorry Starmer and Reeves... Easy mistake to make.

Speaking of mistakes, it was that October budget which backfired so badly, and made a mockery of Reeves's well trumpeted plans for economic growth. If that budget was about growth, then a trip to McDonald's is about reducing your waistline. How ironic that a government that thinks a bloke in a dress is a woman - defying reality and biology - should also think that shrinking the economy is somehow growing it. Make it make sense. And it didn't make much more sense when the chancellor Rachel Reeves today gave a speech in a factory - in front of a machine that sounded like a faulty dishwasher - intended to shore up her reputation, to get back on the front foot, and effectively try to - and forgive my French - polish a turd. As I said on The Mark Dolan Show last week, only a dramatic change in policy, and a change in chancellor, will actually save the country and this ailing administration. We need to drastically cut public spending in order to reduce the deficit, which is costing Brits over £100 billion a year in interest payments alone. That’s an amount of money that would fund an entire government department, or in the case of defence, almost two.

And we need to reduce taxes on businesses, not increase them, so that we can create economic growth - national income - which pays for the police, the nurses and the teachers. It's my view that Rachel Reeves is horribly out of her depth, and that she knows that by promising no rises in income tax, vat or national insurance on workers, that she has painted herself into a corner. Like talking down the economy when they got in, another hollow political move bites them on the bum. Plus Reeves’ so-called fiscal headroom has dropped from £11 billion to 1. She is skating on thin ice, particularly if we tip into recession. Further tax rises would further impact her beloved “growth” which is already more elusive than Shergar and Lord Lucan combined. And cuts to public spending would create a civil war within the Labour party, who only really exist to spend money – yours and mine. Reeves is in trouble. Starmer may eventually fire his chancellor; he is notoriously ruthless, and has about as many principles as a goldfish bowl. But that will only paper over the cracks of what is ultimately a failed economic approach from a party that had no plan for government and has already been found out.

Now there were some positives in Reeves’s speech today. Finally a third runway at Heathrow Airport - definitely good for growth in the long run, and it's an annoyed London Mayor Sadiq Khan, which is good enough for me. Him not agreeing with something is my most reliable metric for backing a policy, closely followed by the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Linking Oxford and Cambridge with a proper transport infrastructure makes sense, I like the sound of “Europe's answer to Silicon Valley”. However, I got quite queasy when Reeves proudly announced that Sir Patrick Vallance, one of the key architects of our disastrous pandemic response, is to head up the so-called Oxford and Cambridge growth corridor. Based upon his track record over the last few years, and the damage his policies have done to the country, Oxford and Cambridge will both be polytechnics by this time next year. More trains and buses across the Midlands and the north of England - happy days - count me in.

Now I never want my remarks about politicians on The Mark Dolan Show to be personal, but I have to just tell you that I don't like Rachel Reeves. I don't like being told she’s going for growth, with policies that she knows will do the opposite. That’s about as honest as her CV. And I'm sick and tired of hearing about her being the first woman chancellor. How embarrassing for women, given her disastrous performance. If only Britain's first woman Prime Minister, the aforementioned Margaret Thatcher, was here to fix the problems of this country once again. Because the parallels between 1979 and 2025 are eerily similar.

Starmer and Reeves’s apparent enthusiasm for AI and digital technology, as well as for manufacturing, also ring hollow, given that their crazy Net Zero policies, spearheaded by bacon sandwich demolition man Ed Miliband, are set to entrench the eye wateringly high cost that we pay for energy in this country. In fact it's been projected that soon, the cost of energy for businesses and households in America will be A QUARTER of what we pay. Why, because Donald Trump plans to tap into America’s capacious natural resources, resources WE’VE got in the North Sea, that in an act of economic suicide, we will not be exploiting. Taxing businesses, a blitzkrieg of red tape on companies – costing businesses £5 billion – ruinous Net Zero, spending beyond our means, unlimited low quality immigration, taxing and borrowing till kingdom come - this is not a path to the future, it's the road to hell. And I’m already feeling car sick.

Rachel Reeves was right to complain about the ridiculous cost of £100 million for a bat tunnel as part of HS2. But most of the policies that she announced today, are even more batty.