4 days ago
Gordon Brown's intervention shows Rachel Reeves is out of ideas
What exactly is Gordon Brown up to? Having largely kept his counsel in recent years, the former prime minister took to the airwaves on Thursday morning to set out what was effectively an alternative budget.
Among the ideas he was pushing were ramping up tax on the gambling industry to pay for lifting the two-child benefit cap; ignoring fiscal rules when it comes to defence spending, and teaming up with other European countries to keep procurement costs down.
If you understand the way Westminster works, it would be tempting to think this was Rachel Reeves using an elder statesman to 'pitch roll' her own ideas – in other words using a stooge to test the public's reaction so she could deny all connection with it if it went down badly.
If anything though, the opposite is true. Ms Reeves did not ask Mr Brown to put the proposals out there, and his intervention was largely unhelpful.
Mr Brown may have been a controversial prime minister but he was broadly respected as chancellor, the role he filled for 10 years. His favourite word was prudence, a word no one associates with Ms Reeves as she taxes the economy towards oblivion.
The problem, then, for Ms Reeves is that having a predecessor coming up with novel ideas reminds voters how few she has of her own, and just how little room she has for manoeuvre after killing off growth with her jobs tax.
Mr Brown did not spring his media appearance on Ms Reeves – he is far too polite to do that. I'm told they spoke at the weekend, when Mr Brown set out what he was going to say, and that Ms Reeves did not try to dissuade him.
Ms Reeves has enormous respect for Mr Brown, who is something of a political idol for her, but the Treasury's private response to his appearance on BBC Radio 4's Today programme and a column in The Guardian is telling.
Treasury insiders have questioned the figures quoted by Mr Brown in his miracle cure for child poverty.
Mr Brown used figures from a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which said that the betting industry only paid £2.5bn in tax, and that another £3bn could be raised by 'taxing it properly', in Mr Brown's words (money that could be spent on lifting the two-child benefit cap).
A betting industry source told The Telegraph the true amount of tax paid is £4bn, and one government insider questioned whether the IPPR's figures were 'credible' and suggested think tanks needed better scrutiny.
Ms Reeves has launched a consultation on gambling taxes and on child poverty and Mr Brown, a lifelong campaigner for reducing child poverty, has submitted detailed proposals to both.
Ms Reeves does not, however, see the two issues as inextricably linked. One Treasury source said that no government could be expected to indulge in a game of 'whack a mole' – the phrase that irritated politicians tend to reach for when they are asked how the Treasury is going to solve this problem or that.
The same source said: 'We have done breakfast clubs, free school meals, there is a child poverty taskforce later in the year and we are not going to pre-empt that.'
On the issue of putting defence spending outside of Ms Reeves's fiscal rules, the same source pointed out that while Germany has made such a move, it can afford to do so because it has much lower levels of debt, and that however Ms Reeves tries to raise money for increased defence spending, 'borrowing is still borrowing'.
As for Mr Brown's suggestion that European members of Nato should use their combined spending power to bring down the costs of procurement, a source close to Ms Reeves said: 'Rachel has been leading the work in Europe on how European countries can do more together.'
Ms Reeves and Mr Brown are 'close and speak a lot', but that is not the same as saying they are on the same page.
The brutal truth is that every time Mr Brown offers up ideas about how Labour could solve society's problems, a comparison is automatically made in the public's minds that only makes Ms Reeves look feebler.
