The Chancellor’s incompetence has shown Labour’s true colours
Starmer and Reeves hit an all new low (Image: Getty)
The mood in the House of Commons amongst Labour MPs is funereal. Most have already accepted that they will be voted out at the next general election. Rachel Reeves paces the Commons like a haunted woman on her way to the gallows knowing her time is up. Her second budget – only eight days away – will almost certainly be her last, and Starmer will no doubt follow her out of the door shortly afterwards.
There will be no tears for Reeves. Latest IPSOS polling has her as the most unpopular Chancellor in history, largely due to her first budget – the highest tax-rising one on record – so what her ratings will be after she does the same again next week, Lord only knows. There won’t be any tears for Keir Starmer either, whose poll ratings are now even worse than Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
Reeves, during her brief time as Chancellor, has managed to upset everyone. Incredibly, for the left of her party, she hasn’t been socialist enough despite her crippling tax rises and spending splurge last year. As far as the Blairites are concerned, she isn’t dynamic enough and hasn’t delivered promised growth, and as for the money markets, she isn’t economically literate enough.
The truth is, Reeves just isn’t good enough. She is out of her depth, out of ideas and out of favour with her own MPs who are telling anyone who will listen that they want her – and Starmer – out.
It is why last Thursday, Reeves, desperate to try and placate her rebellious backbenchers, performed that excruciating U-turn on her u-turn and dropped her planned, manifesto breaking, income tax rise. Government claims that it was dropped because of an improvement in the Office for Budget Responsibility numbers are laughable given that all economic indicators are getting worse.
No, this U-turn was a political decision not a financial one by a desperate Prime Minister and Chancellor trying to save their own skin. The only problem is, they have just made matters a whole lot worse for the country.
In their bid to survive, they have just surrendered control of the party to their money-splurging, left-wing backbenchers who are now demanding more is spent on welfare benefits and WASPI women. This alone will run into tens of billions of pounds which will push borrowing and taxes up further.
Smelling the end is nigh for the Starmer and Reeves regime, Cabinet Ministers are already openly jostling for position to replace them. Wes Streeting is schmoozing Labour MPs in advance of a leadership bid, and even disgraced ex Cabinet Minister Angela Rayner thinks she is a better bet with the public than Starmer.
The truth is none of the above have the economic competence to govern this country. And no amount of reshuffling at the top will spare the country from Labour’s inevitable economic collapse.
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Ed Miliband through his botched ideological wind auction has signed the country up to sky-high energy bills for the next two decades.
When Labour came into office promising to cut energy bills by £300 (remember that?) they stood at £72 pounds a megawatt hour, last year they locked us into a fixed rate of £82 for off shore wind, and this year they are offering up to £117. These are fixed-rate, inflation-linked contracts, for 20 years.
As Claire Coutinho, the shadow climate secretary rightly observed, Miliband has just locked us into Labour’s new version of PFI, and we know now bad Labour’s last PFI deals turned out to be.
More funny money – and we will all be paying the cost for many years to come.
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Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick delivered the most memorable moment in Parliament last week when the clown David Lammy, who masquerades as the Deputy Prime Minister, announced that over 90 prisoners had been released in error already this year, and that there was one who Lammy incredibly told the House of Commons he hadn’t been able to establish if he had been released or not.
Jenrick asked Lammy if he had looked in his cell to see if he was there: “Either he is there or not”. Nothing better summed up the incompetence of Lammy or this useless government.
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I’m not sure what is more alarming, George Osborne having Peter Mandelson round to his house for a cosy dinner or Mandelson urinating on George’s next door neighbour’s wall after the dinner whilst waiting for his Uber. Didn’t he think to just go back inside and ask George if he could use his lavatory? What it shows us all is that while one Labour grandee is urinating up the wall, Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves is urinating all of our money up the wall.
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In Newcastle last weekend I interviewed Mike Pence – 48th Vice-President to President Donald Trump between 2017 to 2021. I liked Pence, a grounded, no-nonsense kind of guy, so I wasn’t at all surprised Esquire Magazine had named him as one of the top 10 best members of Congress.
His grandad was a bus driver, his dad a veteran awarded the Bronze Cross and his son is a fighter pilot in the US Marine Corps. He is a Reagan/Thatcher Conservative who helped Trump win the rust belt working-class areas.
He is a man of integrity with very strong Conservative principles and values. I have a feeling Trump may well be missing his wise counsel. They were clearly a formidable duo.
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Boxing has got its X-factor back as a sport as can be seen by who had ringside seats at the Eubank v Benn fight on Saturday night. Rod Stewart and Piers Brosnan were there along with Jason Statham and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Emma Bunton and Olly Murs. I think I’d have been too busy star spotting to watch any of the boxing!
