Ed Miliband was in his element, spending our money. Energy Secretary Miliband had come to the Commons to announce a £14.2billion binge on nuclear energy. How skittish and giddy he was. The Red Rum teeth were brandished. All his goofiest limb-waving gesticulations were seen.
He was full of beans, his pleasure possibly accentuated by the fact that the Cabinet minister rumoured to have come a cropper in the spending review is Yvette Cooper, wife of his former shadow chancellor Ed Balls.
Miliband and Balls once competed for Gordon Brown’s favours. Later they had a fruitless spell running the opposition. That partnership ended badly.
Now Mr Miliband is back in footlights. ‘I don’t want to steal the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s thunder,’ he insisted. Don’t believe it.
He was relishing this opportunity to announce so much spending. It is a measure of Rachel Reeves‘s decline that Mr Miliband, not she, was entrusted with this splurge.
He kept nibbling his right thumb, a gerbil with its carrot. Now he grabbed his right foot, clutched his right cheek, hugged himself, flicked through his file, shrugged, muttered to himself, stroked his eyelashes, ran a finger through his fringe, patted the back of his head, excavated wax from one ear, pulled weird faces, drilled his cross-eyed stare at the carpet, clenched one fist and said ‘incredibly’ a lot.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Would you entrust this man with £14.2billion? Would you hire him even to drive a milk float?
Shadow minister Nick Timothy said the Conservatives had long been pro-nuclear. ‘It’s kinda hard on a day like this to be a member of the Opposition,’ laughed Mr Miliband before he asserted his core philosophy: public spending. ‘I’m the guy that identified Sizewell and I’m the guy that’s delivering Sizewell,’ he crowed. ‘They didn’t put the money up!’
In Mili-land, ‘putting the money up’ is an entirely asexual, amoebic activity. How that money is created (ie taxes or borrowing) is never mentioned, writes Quentin Letts
In Mili-land, ‘putting the money up’ is an entirely asexual, amoebic activity. How that money is created (ie taxes or borrowing) is never mentioned. The Lib Dems’ spokesman, Pippa Heylings, blew up on take-off. She tried complaining that the Tories were responsible for 14 years of ‘dither and delay’ on nuclear.
It was not lost on the House that David Cameron’s Coalition government froze nuclear projects on the insistence of… the loony Lib Dems! Newcomer Heylings was whacked by heckles and laughter. This offended her tender sensibilities. ‘Can I continue? Can I continue?’ she squawked. Speaker Hoyle told her to stop being feeble.
It was, incidentally, the Speaker’s birthday. He was wished happy returns by not just one or two MPs but by 49 of them. Repetitive sycophancy syndrome.
Mr Miliband, in response to hapless Heylings, gave us a glimpse of his boyhood. He noted that Ms Heylings had ‘slightly airbrushed out the role of the current leader of the Lib Dems’ (Sir Ed Davey was, you may recall, an energy secretary in the Coalition years). ‘We’ll sort of Trotsky that out, to use a family term,’ honked Mr Miliband. In the Miliband home of the 1970s, Trotsky’s merciless treatment of his enemies was plainly an everyday topic.
Numerous Labour MPs had fled the chamber at the start of the statement but those who stayed were enthusiastic about the spending, none more so than Derby South’s Baggy Shanker. He whooped about Rolls-Royce winning a big commission to help build the new nuclear plant.
‘Great news for the country, great news for Derby,’ cried Mr Shanker. And pretty decent news for the Shanker finances, too. His register of interests shows that Mr Baggy Trousers owns more than £70,000 worth of Rolls-Royce shares, his wife and son having more. How commendably Thatcherite.
Until recently the Left would have fretted about radioactive waste from nuclear energy. In the Blair years that was the establishment’s position. Now it was only Jeremy Corbyn (Ind, Islington N) who mentioned it. Political fashion has changed. The Left has been mugged by reality. But we are all paying the cost, in billions, for its past posturing.
Rachel Reeves rocked by jobs slump: Shock figures show quarter of a MILLION jobs have gone since tax-raising Budget – as Chancellor prepares for giant spending spree
Rachel Reeves has been hit by a jobs slump as she prepares to take a gamble on the nation’s finances with a giant spending spree.
In a blow that makes a mockery of the Chancellor’s claim to have ‘fixed the foundations’ of the economy, official figures showed a quarter of a million jobs have gone since her tax-raising Budget last year.
Experts said it was a ‘painful lesson in basic economics’ for Ms Reeves after she ignored warnings and levied a £25 billion ‘jobs tax’ on National Insurance. The Chancellor will today set out Labour’s spending plans for the rest of the Parliament following a bitter Cabinet battle over how to divide up the proceeds from last year’s Budget.
Last night Ms Reeves admitted that voters do not feel like they have more money in their pockets as Labour prepares to mark one year in office.
But she claimed that turning on the spending taps would ensure ‘working people all over our country are better off’.
Ms Reeves is expected to boast that her new approach will allow Labour to spend a staggering £300 billion more over the next five years than had been planned by the last Tory government.
Ministers have described the spending plans – equal to an extra £8,100 for every taxpayer in Britain – as ‘the end of austerity’. But Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride warned that the scale of the splurge raises the prospect of further tax rises to be announced this year.
‘Rachel Reeves talks about hard choices – but her real choice has been to take the easy road,’ he said. ‘Spend more, borrow more, and cross her fingers.
Last night Ms Reeves admitted that voters do not feel like they have more money in their pockets as Labour prepares to mark one year in office
In recent days, the Chancellor and Prime Minister have repeatedly claimed that Labour has ‘fixed the foundations’ of the economy, despite rising inflation and cuts to official growth forecasts
This spending review won’t be a plan for the future – it will be a dangerous gamble with Britain’s economic stability.’ He added: ‘Labour is spending money it doesn’t have, with no credible plan to pay for it. That means more borrowing, more debt, and, inevitably, more tax rises in the autumn Budget.’
Last week, Ms Reeves refused to rule out any further tax increases.
Spending will be skewed heavily towards the NHS in an attempt to cut waiting lists further. Defence is set to be another big winner after Sir Keir Starmer committed to spending 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027.
Allies of Angela Rayner were last night claiming victory in her bid to secure more cash towards meeting Labour’s target of building 1.5 million new homes by the next election.
The Deputy Prime Minister, who is responsible for housing policy, had a series of bust-ups with Treasury ministers and No 10 over the issue.
The Treasury had proposed a modest increase in the social housing budget from £2.3 billion a year to £2.5 billion. But government sources last night said Ms Rayner had secured a £39 billion settlement over ten years.
The Treasury said it was the biggest boost to social housing in a generation. But the growing cost of servicing the UK’s debt mountain means other areas of spending, including the police, face a budget squeeze in future years.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘The Chancellor is abandoning all economic credibility in order to appease her insatiable Cabinet colleagues.
‘Ministers need to focus on eradicating waste and providing value for money, not pretending that simply throwing more taxpayers’ cash at a problem is the answer.’
Allies of Angela Rayner were last night claiming victory in her bid to secure more cash towards meeting Labour’s target of building 1.5 million new homes by the next election
In recent days, the Chancellor and Prime Minister have repeatedly claimed that Labour has ‘fixed the foundations’ of the economy, despite rising inflation and cuts to official growth forecasts.
Yesterday’s stark employment figures underline the real-world impact of Labour’s tax and spend approach. They revealed UK payroll numbers have shrunk by 276,000 over the past seven months. In May alone, payrolls fell by 109,000 – the worst month since the pandemic.
Meanwhile the unemployment rate has climbed to 4.6 per cent, the highest in nearly four years.
Experts pinned the blame on Ms Reeves’s £25 billion raid on employer National Insurance, which was announced in the October Budget and took effect in April. Payroll numbers fell every month since the Budget.
Julian Jessop, economics fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a free market think-tank, said: ‘The slump in the number of payrolled jobs in May is a painful lesson in basic economics: if you make it much more expensive to employ people, fewer people will be employed.’ Trade body UK Hospitality pointed out that the impact on jobs had turned out to be far worse than feared.
At the time the tax raid was announced, forecasts from the Government’s fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, predicted it would cost 50,000 jobs, while Deutsche Bank forecast 100,000 jobs would go.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, said: ‘Losing more than 100,000 jobs across the economy in a month goes far beyond the worst-case scenario predicted by the Government’s own fiscal watchdog, major banks, and countless business groups.
‘We were clear at the time that the changes to NICs were a tax on jobs, and so it is sadly proving.’
