Politics
Urgent memo from his anxious ministers to Sir Keir Starmer: you need to get a grip of No 10 | Andrew Rawnsley
Over a cuppa in Liverpool, the Labour MP was getting nostalgic about the election campaign. Drivers would spot her on the street and stop their cars in order to wish her luck and give her a hug. Then she became wistful: “They’re not hugging me now.”
The Labour conference was a curious cocktail of the jubilant and the jittery, the gleeful and the grumbly. Celebration of the largest parliamentary landslide in a generation was mixed with angst about Labour’s tanking popularity. Don’t let anyone tell you it was an entirely overcast occasion. I met plenty of buoyant delegates along with ministers saying how brilliant it was to be in power after so many miserable years in opposition. One cabinet member expressed delight that “after 14 years howling into the void, we can now do things”. The mantra “the worst day in government is better than the best day in opposition” was often to be heard.
Don’t let anyone tell you that it was universally cheery either. One senior figure, who was a student when he attended the Labour conference immediately after the first Tony Blair landslide, remarked dolefully: “It is not like 1997, is it?” It probably never could have been, given the state of the realm that Labour inherited from the Tories. Realists in the cabinet didn’t expect voters to be happy with Labour for all that long, but few thought they’d be evicted from the honeymoon suite with such brutal rapidity. After just three months in power, the government’s approval ratings are slumping and Sir Keir Starmer’s personal score has plunged precipitously. The noisy resignation of Rosie Duffield adds yet more turbulence.
There’s a pervasive feeling that the desire to ram home the direness of the Tory legacy and prepare the ground for difficult decisions on tax and spend has led to an excess of miserabilism about what faces Britain. At a pre-conference meeting of the cabinet, I am told, Pat McFadden warned his colleagues that they had struck the wrong “balance between light and shade”. The Cabinet Office minister usually projects the persona of a dour Scot to the point of conscious parody. So it tells you something when even the lugubrious Mr McFadden thinks they’ve overdone the doom and gloom. Cabinet members were encouraged to expect the speeches from the prime minister and chancellor to sound more optimistic notes. Both did, up to a point. Rachel Reeves claimed that “Britain’s best days lie ahead” while Sir Keir spoke of “a Britain built to last”. What neither quite managed to conjure up was an inspirational vision of a shining city on a hill.
Their essential message was unchanged: it will take time to put the country on the right track and it will involve doing things that a lot of people are not going to like. The removal of the winter fuel allowance from most pensioners, the subject of a hostile conference vote on the last day, is going to be followed by a budget that will be flinty about day-to-day spending even if there is tweaking of the fiscal rules to allow more funding for capital investment.
The neighbours of Downing Street pride themselves on being hard-working, practical, methodical people. Neither are lyrical orators. More, they are instinctively wary of anything that sounds like what the Labour leader derides as “the politics of easy answers” and “false hope”. Sir Keir keeps saying that he is “prepared to be unpopular” almost as if it would be a disgrace not to be disliked. Both prime minister and chancellor are calculating – perhaps I ought to say gambling – that they will ultimately get credit for confronting the public with the tough trade-offs necessary to reform the country.
One of the standout lines from the Starmer speech was the declaration: “We will turn our collar up and face the storm.” This bad-weather warning told us that he still thinks things are going to get worse before they get better. Referencing the furore over winter fuel payments, one party veteran remarks: “Labour backbenchers better be prepared to defend a lot worse shit than this.”
To endure the tempest in decent shape, the government will need to be organised, resilient, deft and united. So another source of anxiety, which I frequently hear expressed by members of the cabinet, is that the centre is not functioning anything like as smoothly as they expected from a Starmer-headed Downing Street. “Number 10 hasn’t worked out its role,” observes one cabinet member. “Too much time is being spent looking inwards trying to sort themselves out and not enough of it is being spent looking outward.” There’s more to this than fretting about the failure to shake off the freebies saga and dismay about rancorous power struggles and personality clashes within Number 10. I hear ministers lament that there has been inadequate preparation for power in some vital areas, while also complaining that agreements made in opposition about how things would be run have been torn up since they arrived in office. Says one cabinet source: “We had it all agreed who were going to be ministers and who were going to be spads (special advisers). Then it all got junked. So what was the point of all the preparation?”
The pivotal post of principal private secretary to the prime minister is unfilled because of feuding about who it should be. There are also growing concerns that the “mission boards”, supposed to drive delivery of the government’s ambitions, are already proving too sluggishly bureaucratic for the task. Some assign the blame for dysfunctionality to Sue Gray, the chief of staff who has been in the headlines far more than she wants to be. Others assign responsibility to her enemies operating in the shadows. When talking to ministers, I find many fingers angrily jabbing in the direction of Simon Case, the Boris Johnson-appointed cabinet secretary. If I were to sink a beer every time I hear a Labour person say he needs to be ushered out of the building as soon as possible, I would require hospital treatment for alcohol poisoning. This can’t be left to drift until after Christmas. Sir Keir needs a new cabinet secretary pronto and one with the qualities required to command not just the prime minister’s confidence, but also that of the civil service and the cabinet.
The thorniest challenge is convincing the country that “change” was not just an election slogan, but a plan to make palpable improvements to people’s lives. One difficulty, in both managing Labour MPs and telling a persuasive story to the public, is that we have entered what you might call the post-euphoria, pre-delivery phase. Delight about the removal of the Tories is dissipating without being replaced by enthusiasm for what Labour is attempting to do. For sure, ministers can reel off a list of actions they’ve taken since the July election: from making a start on the creation of GB Energy; to changing the planning regime to facilitate more building; to announcing the plan to bring all the train operators into public ownership; and to establishing a new border security command.
It is a long list with a snag attached. Politicians don’t win public affection by publishing white papers and announcing reorganisations. They rarely win applause for issuing a new regulation or passing a piece of legislation. Apart from the pay rises agreed for public sector workers, as far as many voters are concerned, there’s little yet that has made a visible, feelable, tangible change to their lives. Breakfast clubs in every English primary school are one of the government’s better ideas and also one that shouldn’t be too taxing to bring into existence. Parents will notice that as an appreciable result of Labour government. Yet the rollout will not start until the beginning of the next summer term in April 2025, and at first on a trial basis covering just 750 of England’s 16,783 primary schools. To ensure that policy is implemented effectively, there’s sense in testing what works rather than rushing in and repenting later. But the incremental approach delays the day when voters start to see the difference that Labour can make.
“Treasury says no” is another obstacle I hear complaints about. Cabinet members with initiatives they’re itching to take are chafing against the restraints imposed by Rachel Reeves’ powerful bailiwick because it is blocking any announcements with a cost implication before the budget at the end of October.
There’s plenty to commend about the candour of the chancellor and the prime minister when they ask for patience because a better Britain won’t be built in a day. But after committing too many avoidable own goals, the government could now do with some quick wins.
Politics
Chancellor expected to hike employers National Insurance
The chancellor is set to increase the amount employers in the UK pay in National Insurance at the Budget.
Rachel Reeves is also expected to lower the threshold for when employers start paying the tax, but is not likely to introduce the levy to employer pensions contributions.
It is understood the changes could raise £20bn for public services, such as the NHS.
The move is thought to be the single largest revenue raiser of next week’s Budget, but other tax rises are also expected.
Politics
Labour MPs urge Keir Starmer to clarify stance on non-cash slavery reparations | Commonwealth summit
Labour MPs have urged Keir Starmer to clarify his government’s position on non-cash reparations for Britain’s historical role in the slave trade, as No 10 says the issue is off the table.
In the run-up to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm), the government said it would not be issuing an official state apology.
While travelling to the conference, which began in the Pacific island nation of Samoa on Friday, the prime minister told reporters he wanted to “look forward” rather than have “very long endless discussions about reparations on the past”.
King Charles acknowledged “painful aspects” of Britain’s past but sidestepped calls to directly address reparations for slavery, saying “none of us can change the past, but we can commit … to learning its lessons”.
But despite the insistence from Downing Street that the issue was not on the agenda for the summit of 56 Commonwealth countries, leaders were prepared to defy the UK. A draft version of the final communique that was leaked to the BBC this week said leaders had “agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity”.
After mounting pressure for the UK to engage in a “meaningful, truthful and respectful” conversation about Britain’s past, a source in No 10 said the UK could support some forms of reparatory justice, such as restructuring financial institutions and providing debt relief.
This was initially welcomed by the Labour MP Diane Abbott, who sits on the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations (APPG-AR), who said she was “glad that Starmer seems to have backed off from his complete hostility to the concept of reparations. It remains to be seen what he means by ‘non-financial reparative justice’.”
Some campaigners were frustrated by what they felt to be either a game of semantics on the issue, or a deliberate misrepresentation of what the campaign for reparations is. Among the long-established 10-point plan for reparatory justice by the Caribbean community (Caricom) is debt cancellation, while others have long campaigned on the link between reparatory justice and climate resilience.
Michael McEachrane, the UN rapporteur of the permanent forum on people of African descent, said: “Keir Starmer misrepresents reparations … It is a matter of taking responsibility for and transforming legacies of the past in the present.”
Only then, McEachrane added, would the Commonwealth community see “greater equity within and among countries”.
When No 10 was pressed to explain what it meant by non-financial reparative justice in Friday’s press briefing, a spokesperson pushed back on the idea.
The prime minister’s deputy spokesperson said: “Our position on reparations is clear, and that goes for other forms of non-financial reparatory justice too. The prime minister’s focus is on addressing the challenges that we face.”
In response, Abbott said: “Incredible that Starmer wants to treat the leaders of fellow Commonwealth countries with such disrespect. And it is offensive that he seems to be saying that he knows what they want to discuss better than they themselves do.”
Fellow Labour MP Clive Lewis questioned how Starmer and his team could go to the summit and not expect reparations to come up: “Has he not been paying attention to the African Union, Caricom, [the Barbados PM] Mia Mottley, the Bridgetown Initiative? This is what has been happening whilst he has been in politics.
“It looks very much like they’ve said, in a very kind of colonial mindset, that this is not for discussion. It’s not on the agenda. Well, that’s not going to go down well in a Commonwealth of equals.”
Lewis, who called in parliament for the UK to enter negotiations with Caribbean leaders on paying reparations for Britain’s role in slavery, said: “You have to ask the question, given that David Lammy himself is a son of Guyana, who has been talking about this for years, the person who came after Bernie Grant: someone lost a memo somewhere.
“I can’t believe that David didn’t know that this was going to come up, and someone must have told No 10 this was coming up … it is quite revealing of something.”
Politics
Some Home Office staff to get pay rise of over 9%
Some Home Office staff are getting an inflation-busting 9% pay rise, the department has confirmed.
The union representing civil servants, PCS, welcomed the deal, which is nearly double the 5% agreed for most civil servants.
The pay boost is meant to improve staff retention and morale, which is the lowest in the civil service.
But Conservative MP Neil O’Brien said the pay hike would “stick in the craw” of people worried about immigration and crime.
The BBC understands the pay rises will be backdated to the start of July and will range from 6% to 9.1% for executive officers working outside of London.
Inflation is running at 2.2%, according to the latest figures.
But the PCS union said its members “deserve rises significantly above inflation to reclaim pay that we have lost through years of below-inflation rises”.
The Home Office’s most recent annual report showed the cost of hiring temporary agency staff had tripled on the last two years to more than half a billion pounds, most of which was spent on dealing with illegal immigration, as well as the now-cancelled Rwanda deal.
A Home Office spokesman said the pay rises were in line with the civil service pay remit guidance.
He said: “This year’s pay guidance recognises the hard work and vital importance of all our staff and is broadly in line with others in the public sector.
“One relatively junior grade in a particular region has received the higher amount to bring them into line with their peers.”
PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said she would continue to push for a “fair and sustainable long-term pay settlement” to make up for “many years” of below-inflation pay.
She said: “We have made progress in negotiations with the Home Office and we welcome the fact that the final offer would deliver increases for the admin and executive grades that are above the 5% headline figure in the civil service remit.
“We believe this is the best award that can be delivered through departmental negotiations alone.”
However, critics have questioned whether the recent performance of the Home Office staff justified a bumper pay rise.
The move comes as the number of migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year topped 29,000, approached the total for the whole of last year.
O’Brien said: “I have no problem with people being rewarded for good performance.
“But with massive numbers crossing the channel, crime clear-up rates low and dangerous people getting let out of jail, this large pay rise will stick in the craw of a lot of people.”
Politics
Couple given go-ahead to sue governments over winter fuel payment
A Scottish couple have been given permission to proceed with a legal bid to overturn the scrapping of the universal winter fuel benefit for all pensioners.
Peter and Florence Fanning, from Coatbridge in North Lanarkshire, have argued both the UK and Scottish governments failed to adequately consult with those of pension age and did not release an equality impact assessment on the changes.
The judicial review required a judge’s approval to move to a full hearing, which has been given.
A hearing at the Court of Session in Edinburgh is now scheduled for 15 January.
The case will ask the Court of Session to rule on whether the decision to scrap the universal benefit was unlawful.
This would allow the petitioners to ask the court to, in effect, set aside the policy and restore the winter fuel payment to all.
A spokesperson for Govan Law Centre, which has taken the case for the Fannings, said their clients were “delighted” that permission had been granted.
They added they were awaiting a decision next week on whether civil legal aid from the Scottish Legal Aid Board would be granted.
The controversial decision has been criticised by trade unions and groups representing older people.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves previously announced the benefit needed to be means- tested from this winter due to a £22m “black hole” in public finances that she said Labour had inherited from the previous Conservative government.
The benefit is devolved but the Scottish government said it had to follow suit as £160m had been taken out its budget.
Mr Fanning stated in September that the decision created “manifest injustice” for those affected.
The couple were being supported by former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, who put them in touch with Govan Law Centre and called the payment being scrapped “unacceptable”.
The Alba party leader has since died after suffering a heart attack in North Macedonia.
First Minister John Swinney said last month that he understood public concerns about the payment but that the Scottish government was having to face “hard reality” regarding budgets.
Earlier this month the SNP tabled a Holyrood motion calling on Sir Keir Starmer to reverse the decision.
A spokesperson for the UK government previously said it was committed to supporting pensioners and that millions would see their state pension rise by £1,700 during this parliament.
Politics
Many African kings opposed eradicating slavery
The government should “unequivocally reject” calls for the UK to pay reparations for its role in the slave trade, Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has said.
He said calls for the UK to pay reparations were “based on false and misleading narratives about our past”.
Britain “worked harder than nearly any other country to eradicate the practice” in the 19th century, adding that the campaign against slavery was “opposed by many African kings”.
There have been attempts to get reparations discussed at a meeting of the 56 Commonwealth countries in Samoa.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has already ruled out making payments, telling the BBC: “That’s not something that this government is doing.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the slave trade was “abhorrent” but that it would be better to focus on “today’s challenges” such as climate change.
Caribbean countries have been particularly keen to press the issue. Earlier this week, Bahamas foreign minister Frederick Mitchell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that reparations were not just about money but a matter of “respect, acknowledging the past was wrong and needs to be corrected”.
Kemi Badenoch, Jenrick’s opponent in the Tory leadership race, said the government was facing reparation demands because Labour politicians had “spent their time in opposition supporting these sort of fringe, unnecessary causes under the guise of decolonisation”.
“Now the British public are waking up to the reality of a Labour government that is ashamed of its own country – giving away the Chagos Islands, watering down Britain’s influence at the UN, and reducing our support for Israel in their fight against terror.
“If I am leader of the opposition I will ensure Keir Starmer is held to account for his deplorable actions.”
Reparations are actions that can be taken to amend for past wrongs. For example, in 2013, the UK government paid £19.9m to 5,000 elderly Kenyans who had been tortured by British colonial forces in the 1950s.
From the 16th century, the British government, along with other European countries, participated in the transatlantic slave trade.
It is estimated that between 1500 and 1800 around 12 -15 million people were trafficked from African countries to be used as enslaved labour in the Caribbean, North, Central and South America. Around two million died on the journey to the Americas.
Having been one of the big beneficiaries of the trade, Britain had a key role in ending the practice and abolished slavery in 1833.
As part of the policy, British plantation owners were paid £20m for the loss of their slaves, creating a debt the UK only finished paying off in 2015.
Addressing the Henry Jackson Society think tank in London, Jenrick said: “It was Britain that spent 1.8% of GDP between 1808 and 1867 on eradicating slavery – the most expensive moral foreign policy on human history.”
“It was a campaign in fact opposed by many African Kings.
“The West African squadron sacrificed their lives for liberty and freedom and it is high time that we recognise their contribution with a national memorial to honour them and everything that they did.”
The Royal Navy squadron was tasked with stopping vessels transporting slaves and was involved in freeing around 150,000 slaves in the 19th century.
Just as European nations were enriched themselves through the slave trade, some African slave sellers also profited from the practice.
Jenrick said calls for the UK to pay reparations were “based on false and misleading narratives about our past”.
Last year, a UN judge co-authored a report which estimated that the UK should pay £18.8tn for its involvement in slavery.
The report said the harm caused by the slave trade was “vast” adding: “Its repercussions resonate in the lives of descendants of the enslaved to this day.”
It also argues that descendants “even to this day” have lower incomes and poor health outcomes.
Historian Professor Sir Hilary Beckles told the report that slavery had led to the black population in the Caribbean experiencing high levels of diabetes, with Barbados and Jamaica “competing for the title of ‘Amputation Capital of the World.’”.
Politics
Chess fanatic playing Labour’s first big gambit
“Serious” and “determined” are words often used to describe Rachel Reeves, the UK’s first female chancellor.
But colleagues and friends have suggested the Labour MP’s public persona does not reflect her human side, with a loud laugh and deep love of Beyoncé tracks.
In her maiden speech in the House of Commons in 2010, she vowed to fight for “jobs, growth and prosperity” – likely centrepieces of Labour’s first Budget in nearly 15 years, on 30 October.
So who is Reeves, and how is she addressing the economic and financial challenges the country faces?
Reeves was born in south-east London in 1979, just months before Margaret Thatcher became prime minister at a time of immense social and economic change.
She has previously told the BBC her mother would tick off items on a bank statement against receipts while sitting at the kitchen table: “We weren’t poor, but we didn’t have money to waste.”
Her parents separated when she was at primary school, and she and younger sister Ellie, also a Labour MP, were shuttled between separate homes.
During the school holidays, the sisters would spend time with their grandparents in the Northamptonshire town of Kettering.
They would be taken to do the rounds of relatives’ houses, who would give them a 20p or 50p piece each. At the end of their week, they were taken to the local toy shop to choose their goodies. While Ellie would spend all her cash, the young Rachel would allow herself a smaller treat and save most of the money.
Decades later, Chancellor Reeves would say that kind of restraint defines her, and she has very much modelled herself on Gordon Brown’s “prudence” in the lead-up to Labour’s 1997 election win.
Chess talent
Reeves played chess from an early age, with her father teaching her the key moves. She became a national under-14 champion, and would “quietly thrash” any boys who might think they were in for an easy game, according to Ellie.
She has credited chess with teaching her “to think ahead, to plan a strategy”.
A keen flute player, she took her music GCSE a year early at Beckenham’s Cator Park School for Girls, a comprehensive, and would go on to gain four A grades at A-level.
Seeing the extent of cuts at her school, where the library had been turned into a classroom and the sixth form consisted of “two pre-fab huts in the playground”, she has said she was politicised by her own experience of public services. At the age of 16, she joined the Labour Party.
She went on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University. As a student, she would host others before college discos, blasting out Destiny’s Child songs and dressing up in her room.
Rachel Reeves: The basics
Age: 45
Place of birth: Lewisham, south-east London
Education: New College, Oxford and the London School of Economics
Family: Married to Nicholas Joicey, a senior civil servant and former speechwriter to Gordon Brown during his time as chancellor. They have two children. Her sister is Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves.
Parliamentary constituency: Leeds West and Pudsey
After graduating, Reeves took on a role as an economist at the Bank of England.
She worked on the central bank’s Japan desk, looking at the country’s attempts to come out of stagnation in the 1990s.
During a secondment to the UK embassy in Washington, she met her future husband Nicholas Joicey, who had spent time as a film critic for newspapers and as a speechwriter to then-Chancellor Gordon Brown.
The path to Parliament was not an easy one though. There were two failed campaigns for the former seat of Bromley and Chislehurst, typically safe for the Conservatives.
Before becoming MP for Leeds West in 2010, Reeves moved to the city and spent time working there for the retail arm of Halifax Bank of Scotland.
She once had an interview for a job at investment bank Goldman Sachs, but turned it down. She said: “I could have been a lot richer.”
Entering Parliament, an early mentor on economic policy was Alistair Darling – the last Labour chancellor, during the financial crisis.
At his funeral last December, Reeves spoke fondly of enjoying lasagne and red wine with him and his wife.
She quickly rose up the party’s ranks, shadowing roles at the Treasury, Work and Pensions, and the Cabinet Office.
Brushes with controversy
While a friend has described her as politically “as hard as nails”, Reeves’ time in Westminster has not been without controversy.
She was accused of “utter hypocrisy” for paying students working in her offices only expenses, rather than a salary. She argued the students were on work placements and getting maintenance support.
Throughout Jeremy Corbyn’s four and a half years as Labour leader, she remained on the backbenches because she felt she could not endorse his policies. Called a “Red Tory” by some in the party, she described this as a “very unpleasant period” in an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson.
A former editor of the BBC’s Newsnight programme was forced to issue a written apology to Reeves after calling her “boring snoring” on social media in a post that was meant to be a private message.
While she said the incident was “deeply humiliating”, her key objective after Sir Keir Starmer appointed her shadow chancellor was to portray Labour as a steady, pro-business hand on the economy.
Last October, she admitted she “should have done better” after it emerged some passages in her book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, had been lifted from other sources without acknowledgment.
She told the BBC some sentences “were not properly referenced” and this would be corrected in future reprints. The Conservatives mockingly called her a “copy and paste shadow chancellor”.
Following Labour’s landslide victory in July’s general election, Reeves was confirmed as the first woman to hold the office of chancellor in its 800-year history.
That was “beyond what a girl like me, from the ordinary background that I came from, could have ever dreamed of,” she recently told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Matt Chorley.
Among a number of early government announcements, she cancelled several infrastructure projects and approved a series of public sector pay rises.
But Reeves will not be delivering her first Budget until the end of October, nearly four months after arriving at the Treasury.
‘Black hole’
Labour argued the time was needed to allow the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to properly assess the state of the UK economy. In 2022, Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng had sidestepped OBR scrutiny of their disastrous mini-budget.
But critics said the Budget was the new government’s main lever of change, and that therefore leaving it so long after taking office was a political error.
During the election campaign, Reeves had predicted Labour would inherit the worst economic situation since 1945. In July, she said a spending audit had uncovered a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances left by the previous government.
The Conservatives cried foul and accused Labour of not telling voters the truth about its intention to put up taxes.
During that campaign, independent analysts such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies observed that ruling out increases in income tax, National Insurance and VAT would severely limit Reeves’ room for manoeuvre in the Treasury.
Government sources have told the BBC the chancellor is now looking for tax rises and spending cuts totalling £40bn in the Budget.
One change she announced early was the scrapping of winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners not receiving means-tested benefits. It has proved highly controversial.
Another move unveiled ahead of the Budget was to change the way government debt is measured, to free up billions of pounds of extra investment in infrastructure projects such as roads, railways and hospitals.
Reeves is determined to remedy the UK’s long-term record of under-investment, setting up a £7bn national wealth fund to encourage private investment in green sectors and repeatedly emphasising the new government’s pro-business credentials.
As she prepares to deliver Labour’s first Budget since 2010, the chancellor has revealed she often chats to a number of senior figures.
“I speak to Gordon [Brown] regularly – I also speak to Tony Blair regularly,” she told Matt Chorley.
Despite their political differences, she also maintains a “good relationship” with Conservative predecessor Jeremy Hunt, she said.
“I may not be particularly impressed with the state of the public finances that he left me, but I do recognise that after Kwasi Kwarteng, he had a tough job to do as well.”
Reeves is politically close to Sir Keir, and also revealed they speak at least once a day, wherever the prime minister is in the world.
But there is a warning from a Labour veteran of the Blair-Brown era, former cabinet minister Lord Blunkett, that she needs to offer the public more hope and less gloom.
He told the BBC Reeves had “been left a terrible hand”, but that “post-Covid, we are a tired nation”, so “more miserableness won’t do”.
He also cautioned that this Budget would probably define the next five years, and that if Labour was going to win a second term, “you have to keep a degree of popularity”. As the Conservatives had found out, he added, “once you’ve lost it, it takes a very very long time to pull it back”.
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