John McDonnell says more cuts would be ‘a disaster for the country’ and steer voters towards ReformGood morning. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is back from her trip to China and, according to Politico, she will make a statement in the Commons. This will allow her to address the criticism she has been facing about the rise in government borrowing costs, and what this means for her spending plans. Reading some of the Tory papers this morning you would think she is on the point of being sacked. This is more partisan wishful-thinking than objective truth-telling, but Reeves is is definitely in some difficulty, because she promised growth and events are not going as planned.As Pippa Crerar and Jessica Elgot report, with the rise in borrowing costs putting the government at risk of breaking its fiscal rules, the Treasury is looking at potential cuts to balance the books.There is obviously a problem. There’s turbulence in the international markets, and we’ve just got to see those through.And the way you do that is – you don’t turn to cuts, certainly, because not only will that … be politically suicidal, that would undermine the political support upon which Labour got elected.There are two groups of people who make judgments on an incoming government. One is the international markets, the money markets, of course.But actually the most important people are the electorate and I think what has to happen here is the electorate have to be protected.You should tax the grotesque inequality that we have within our society – 16 million living in poverty, and yet at the same time,we’ve now created in our society 165 billionaires. And on the last calculation I saw, in the two years from 2020 to 2022, they made an additional £15onbn of wealth. I think you have to look at redistribution. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/jan/14/keir-starmer-rachel-reeves-labour-kemi-badenoch-david-lammy-latest-politics-live-news
Author : Andrew Sparrow
Publish date : 2025-01-14 09:28:00
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Rachel Reeves told it would be ‘politically suicidal’ to impose further cuts as economy falters – UK politics live
