The reaction from the conservative press was nothing short of hysterical.
The right-wing media went into collective meltdown this week after Chancellor Rachel Reeves did something slightly unconventional – gave an unscheduled speech ahead of her Autumn Budget.
Normally, chancellors save their words for the Budget Statement itself. But Reeves chose to speak early, to frame the coming debate on tax, growth, and public spending, and the reaction from the conservative press was nothing short of hysterical.
The Daily Mail dedicated its front page to denouncing the speech with the headline: “Reeves’ waffle bomb.”
The comments were made by Andrew Neil no less, who accused the Chancellor of “bluster and lies,” claiming that “every striver in the land is about to be clobbered for her risible incompetence.”
The veteran columnist described Reeves as a “hapless Chancellor” playing the “not me, guv” game, accusing her of wheeling out Brexit and the Conservatives as scapegoats for the UK’s economic malaise. For the prominent Brexiteer Neil, any mention of the damage caused by Brexit, a reality now broadly accepted by economists and the government, it seems, amounts to excuse-making.
But this is the core of the right-wing dilemma. They cannot admit the obvious. Brexit has been an economic self-sabotage, dragging down growth, trade, and investment. Reeves’ willingness to acknowledge that reality should be seen as “about time” relief, not evasion.
But Neil isn’t finished with his critique of Reeves’ ‘blame-shifting’, arguing that it’s just as absurd for the Chancellor to continue blaming the Tories.
The revolving door of Conservative leadership, from Cameron’s austerity to Johnson’s chaos and Truss’s fiscal calamity, left the economy battered, public services starved, and living standards stagnant. Pretending otherwise is, it could be argued, little more than wilful amnesia.
It is absurd for Neil, or any of his fellow right-wing commentators, to demand that Labour govern as though the past 14 years never happened. The Tories left a fiscal crater and an exhausted state and Reeves is trying to navigate through the wreckage.
For decades, the British right has worshipped at the altar of low taxes, shrinking the state, and letting “the market” do the heavy lifting. The result has been a weaker NHS, crumbling infrastructure, and growing inequality.
When Reeves signals that she will prioritise investment in public services and social protection, in contrast to the renewed austerity promised by Reform and the Conservatives, she is acknowledging reality.
Even the Resolution Foundation has said that an income tax rise, fairly distributed, is inevitable and necessary. As its chief executive, Ruth Curtice, points out, pensioners, who have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of increased public spending, should shoulder part of the burden. Reeves’ approach, if designed properly, could mark a serious step toward rebalancing the tax system.
Andrew Neil condemns Reeves for failing to cut debt, ignoring that growth cannot be revived without investment. He rails against her for wanting to spend more on the NHS, while ignoring that a decade of austerity created the very inefficiencies he bemoans.
Curtice is right when she says Britain must stop hoping “we will magically wake up from the nightmare of a country beleaguered by low growth.”
Of course, it is possible to criticise Labour for not spending more time in opposition in thinking deeply about economic and fiscal policy and how the manifest failures of neoliberalism could best be rectified. Perhaps too, it was foolhardy to promise not to raise direct taxation in the election campaign, although just imagine the response of the right-wing media had they done so. Ultimately though, there is no cheap route to a functioning welfare state or a world-class health service. Perhaps Reeves’ decision to level with the public about that reality should be applauded, not ridiculed.
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