Free speech! But only for the people on ‘our side'
Another compelling week in the ever-flexible world of free speech. Its great champions, Reform, got in across swathes of England and immediately set about banning all flags bar the Union Jack, the St George's Cross and county insignia from flying over its town halls. Nothing rainbow, nothing woke, nothing in support of Ukraine, obviously. Turns out Reform is very much up for free speech and expression, providing the words and opinions chime with its own.
This is how free speech plays in our illiberal world. The same folk who are outraged by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel shutting down concerts by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead and Israeli musician Dudu Tassa want Kneecap to be removed from the Glastonbury bill
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Telegraph
34 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Khan accuses Reeves of ‘levelling down London'
Sir Sadiq Khan has accused Rachel Reeves of 'levelling down' London after she refused to hand over billions for infrastructure projects. The Labour Mayor of London has been battling with the Treasury for funding to pay for the extension of the Bakerloo line and the Docklands Light Railway. He also wanted the Chancellor to give him the green light to impose a tourist tax on visitors to the capital, and to provide millions extra for the Metropolitan Police. But Ms Reeves's spending review, to be unveiled on Wednesday, is not expected to include most of Sir Sadiq's demands. A source close to the Mayor said he would continue 'battling' to get more money out of the Treasury even if he fails at the spending review. They said: 'Over the past nine years as Mayor, Sadiq has fought to deliver for London – in the best interests of Londoners and the whole country. 'We know that when London does well it means the whole country does well, and that it will simply not be possible to achieve national growth ambitions without the right investment and growth in our capital. 'We must not return to the damaging, anti-London approach of the last government, which would not only harm London's vital public services, but jobs and growth across the country.' The spokesman added: 'Sadiq will always stand up for London and has been clear it would be unacceptable if there are no major infrastructure projects for London announced in the spending review and the Met doesn't get the funding it needs… 'It's also important to recognise that parts of London still have some of the highest levels of poverty anywhere in the UK. 'Sadiq will always stand up for London and has been crystal clear that the way to level up other regions is not to level down London.' Reeves's policies A source at the Treasury pointed out that in the year since the Government came to power, Ms Reeves had come out in favour of a third runway at Heathrow and the expansion of Gatwick, Luton and City airports. The Treasury has also expanded late licencing in the capital, given approval to the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street, allocated money so that HS2 will run to London Euston and provided money for free school meals. Last week, Ms Reeves announced £15 billion more to be spent on transport infrastructure outside London and the south-east, part of what was seen as a rebalancing of government priorities away from the capital Research released on Monday from IPPR North found that if the north of England had received the same per person spending as the capital in the past decade, it would have received £140 billion more – enough to build seven Elizabeth lines. Over the decade to 2022/23, each year London received £1,183 per person, while the north of England got £486 per person and the Midlands £455.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Mark my words, we're headed for a monster debt crisis
All things fall apart. Orders, whether domestic or geopolitical, eventually collapse. So too do monetary cycles, typically rising and falling every 80 years or so. The big cycle that began in 1945 is coming to a close as the bond markets begin to crack. Bookmark this piece: a debt crisis is coming. Let me explain what's happening. The yield on government debt is the measure of how much interest people expect to receive to lend the government money. This goes up when the market loses confidence in the government's economic plans or think the Chancellor is going to borrow plenty more. We saw yields shoot up under Liz Truss. But after Rachel Reeves's budget, yields on the UK's 30 year bonds peaked at 5.58 per cent, up from the previous 4.99 per cent peak on the worst day of the mini-budget fallout. More worryingly, the term premium, which is the part of the yield which prices the additional risk that borrowers are taking by holding the Government's long-term debt, has risen far more sharply in the UK than in America, Germany and many other developed countries. If Reeves thought Liz Truss crashed the economy, how would she describe her own failure? The markets have concluded that Reeves's plans to stimulate growth are thin – indeed, fatally contradicted by her jobs and investment destroying tax rises – meaning she will inevitably turn to yet more borrowing to fund huge spending splurges. Borrowing for the year 2024-25 was forecast to be £87 billion in Jeremy Hunt's budget of March 2024, but over this financial year Reeves's Treasury has spent £152 billion more than it received in revenue. To put this in context, in 1976 when the UK was bailed out by the IMF the national debt to GDP ratio was running at 50 per cent. Now it is around 100 per cent – and unfunded public sector pensions take it to over 200 per cent of GDP. That's before you include huge, unquantified liabilities currently swept under the carpet, like nationalising the rail and steel industries. Some will paint my warnings as fearmongering: haven't we been in worse straits before? After WW2, UK government debt peaked at around 270 per cent of GDP and dropped steadily to 50 per cent over 30 years. The truth is that we are now uncomfortably close to that level of debt, but unlike those post-war decades we have no growth to manage our way out of it. The financial repression that was possible post-war required capital controls and fixed exchange rates under Bretton Woods. Today, aggressive measures of this kind would only lead to capital flight, currency depreciation and all manner of other knock-on effects. How might this crisis unfold? Typically in a bond market crisis the most indebted countries are targeted first by bond vigilantes who sell their bonds, force their prices down and the premium up. Buyers of newly issued bonds dry up, demanding ever higher yields. The UK is exposed and the markets sense it. The US has certain advantages as the world's reserve currency, but even it is heading for trouble. In Washington, the latest debt fuelled spending spree has attracted fierce criticism from the likes of Elon Musk. If passed it would set the US on a path to record debt. Even the world's biggest economy cannot be immune from the laws of fiscal gravity forever. So worried are some in Trump's circle that in the so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord and elsewhere, Scott Bessent, now Secretary of the Treasury, and others considered how the US could reduce debt by devaluing the dollar, and even renegotiating debt to force down its liabilities. The backdrop to this is a highly unstable geopolitical world. A quarter of our debt is foreign held. China and other adversaries hold many of the cards. Not that there are friends when it comes to the markets making decisions. As Truss discovered, when there is a loss of confidence in a government's ability to service debt, markets ruthlessly intrude upon democratic government. They effectively dictated the reversal of almost all measures in the mini-budget and removed a Prime Minister. A future debt crisis would see the markets demand spending cuts of a magnitude and scale we've never known before. They will despatch Reeves back to her old job in customer relations in no time. The woman who once preposterously posed as the Iron Chancellor is now seen by the markets as a spendthrift with no growth plan – and unable to resist the unaffordable demands of her backbenchers. Egged on by Nigel Farage, she wants to fork out billions more on benefits by lifting the two-child cap. The economic growth needed to fund this debt boom is not materialising – she is funnelling money to the public sector and crushing the private sector, the engine of growth. Industrial energy prices are now the highest of any developed country, decimating the ceramic, petrochemical, glass and car industries. If Reeves can't persuade the markets she has a plan, and quickly, yields could rise even higher. She is dancing on the edge of a precipice. Of course, the roots of the present challenge go back some way. Covid lockdowns and the money printing that paid for them cast a long shadow. Unlike many who cheered the opening of the spending taps, I warned in Cabinet of the inflationary impacts and sought to run a tight ship in my department. Even before the pandemic hit, the Bank of England's QE had created the illusion that deficits could be financed without end, and that hard trade offs could be avoided. That was fantasy economics. The UK will hit the rocks if we don't change course. There is too much debt because there is too much spending. Labour may try and offset that with more taxation, but they can't do that without crushing growth altogether. If you thought you knew the depth of anger and resignation about the mismanagement of the country, you haven't seen anything yet.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Yvette Cooper ‘on resignation watch' after spending row with Reeves
Yvette Cooper's rows with the Treasury over spending have been so heated that officials fear she will resign. The Home Secretary is understood to have warned Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, that Labour election promises were at risk from a lack of investment in policing. In one meeting last week, Ms Reeves is said to have abruptly brought talks with Ms Cooper to a close. There are also claims a senior Home Office official stopped taking calls from the Treasury. Sir Keir Starmer has had to directly intervene to end the stand-off over the spending review. Downing Street on Monday said Ms Cooper had agreed to accept the Treasury offer, which includes a real-terms increase in policing budgets. Multiple well-placed government insiders told The Telegraph that the negotiations between Ms Cooper and the Treasury became so fraught that there was discussion about whether she would quit. An ally of Ms Cooper on Monday evening denied that she might resign, noting she had been talking to aides about her diary engagements for the rest of the month earlier in the day. But the fact that some figures in Downing Street and the Treasury have considered her departure a distinct possibility underscores how tense the talks became. Labour promised in its 2024 general election manifesto to halve violence against women and girls, reduce knife crime and establish 13,000 more community police officers. As Home Secretary, Ms Cooper is responsible for delivering those promises but it is the Treasury that decides how much money can go into policing. Treasury insiders are framing the police as a winner in Wednesday's spending review, which sets departmental spending for the next three years, as the policing budget will rise in real terms. But the degree to which police chiefs have launched into a public lobbying campaign against the Treasury – one still running over the weekend – suggests they fear it will not be enough. The Tories believe that, even with real-term police spending rises, it is likely that total officer headcount in England and Wales will fall from its peak of 149,000 in 2024 in the years ahead. Ms Cooper was the last cabinet minister left standing when Angela Rayner, the Communities Secretary, who has also battled with the Treasury, settled her budget on Sunday evening. The Home Secretary finally agreed a deal with less than 48 hours to go until Ms Reeves announces her spending plans. One ally of Ms Cooper said of her tough negotiating approach: 'Yvette's been chief secretary of the Treasury. She knows all the best ideas in the book.' A senior Whitehall figure acknowledged that the talks between Ms Cooper and No 11 had been fraught and prompted discussion among aides and officials that she could resign. However any decision to go would likely mean the end of Ms Cooper's front-line political career, since she would not be expected to be welcomed back into the cabinet under Sir Keir. The details of the policing budget, when they are published on Wednesday, will be closely scrutinised for their impact on officer numbers and the delivery of flagship pledges. In a series of interventions in the last few weeks, police chiefs and associations representing officers have been publicly challenging Ms Reeves to go further on police pay. In an article for The Telegraph on Monday, the heads of the Police Superintendents' Association and Police Federation of England and Wales warned that police forces were 'broken' and had been forced to shed officers because of cuts. As an unprotected department, the Home Office has been in Treasury cross-hairs as spending is squeezed from an annual real-term increase of 2.5 per cent to 1.2 per cent. Above-inflation rises for the NHS, extra money for schools and a marked increase in defence spending means other Whitehall budgets have been facing real-term cuts. On Monday, Ms Reeves announced that nine million pensioners will now get the winter fuel payments – a major reversal in policy after all but the poorest lost them last summer. Now pensioners in England and Wales with an income of £35,000 or less will get the annual payment of between £200 and £300 per household. Around two million pensioners whose incomes are above that threshold will get the money but then have it clawed back through the tax system, meaning they will lose out.
