3 days ago
If you're in the private sector, get ready to take a massive hit
It should have been called the Spending More Review. Or even better, the Spending More Without Saying Where the Money is Going to Come From Review. You have to wonder how much longer this Government can go on running against Liz Truss. Or against those other favourite panto villains: Austerity and the £22 Billion Black Hole.
And how much more mileage can there be in swearing fealty to the interests of 'working people' when you clearly mean 'people who work in the public sector' – because you are busy putting the other kind, the ones who work in the private entrepreneurial sector, out of business.
So it was a billion here and a billion there: lots and lots of money to be spent on what are obviously thought to be the most vote-winning recipients, most of whom happen to reside in the Red Wall constituencies which Labour is terrified of losing to Reform.
There was, of course, a large funding increase promised to the NHS without any demand for the kind of reforms that might actually see that money better spent. Even Gordon Brown, who hugely increased health spending, had demanded reform in exchange (although he never actually got it). But to fail even to mention such a condition seems insulting to the intelligence of voters who can see the inefficiencies and waste in the system with their own eyes.
But the most depressing recurrent theme was a return to the sentimental pre-1980s idea of a working class that cannot imagine any life beyond its local industrial roots. The aspiration and social mobility which Blair's New Labour had been compelled to embrace is gone now.
The commitment was to save 'local communities' of 'working people' by developing government-run projects: precisely the conditions that gave rise to the suffocating trade union power of the 1970s. (Ms Reeves explicitly stated her determination to give 'public service workers the pay rises they deserve.') This was a spending programme that a Government led by Jeremy Corbyn would have been proud of.
But the biggest hole in all of this was any explanation of where this money would come from. There was a clear hint in her reiteration of the Government's commitment to pay for increased 'day-to-day' spending through current income rather than by taking on more debt. That means tax rises. But you knew that didn't you?
And if your earnings come from the wealth-creating private sector, even though you may consider yourself at least as much of a 'working person' as those who are paid by the state, you had better be prepared to take a very substantial hit.
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