George Osborne has jumped in on the attack against Labour’s £28 billion-a-year black hole, claiming on his Political Currency podcast yesterday that “their sums don’t really add up“. To be fair to Osborne, he was actually talking some sense about the confusing nature of Reeves’ ‘green growth’ plan. He pointed out that as Labour are expected to vote in favour of Jeremy Hunt’s National Insurance tax cuts whilst committing to reducing debt, then Labour “don’t have any way to fund the £28 billion Green Prosperity Plan…they’re [pledging] spending the money and they haven’t found a way yet to explain how they’re going to pay for it.” Guido is inclined to agree…

After all the chopping and changing over when the £28 billion a year target will actually be hit, and how it will be funded at all, even Ed Balls asked, “what’s the growth plan?”. If both a former chancellor and a former shadow chancellor are questioning the plans, perhaps Reeves’ should rethink them…again.

Rachel Reeves pledged to a cheering Labour conference that in government she would oversee borrowing of £28 billion a year, every year for ‘green investment’ until 2030. Though how they plan to do that, reduce debt and support tax cuts doesn’t add up. Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson, argued that borrowing £28 billion a year would “potentially increasing inflation, and also drive up interest rates”. Yesterday on PoliticsLive, Labour MP Preet Gill said they would would achieve the figure by the second term of government. Labour is now briefing that it will actually be achieved in the second half of the first term. Confused? You are not alone, so are Labour MPs and Shadow Cabinet Ministers.

What actually is their policy?

• Establish GB Energy – a publicly-owned “champion” in clean energy generation, giving £1 billion to local authorities. Though they haven’t laid out how much setting up the state-owned company would actually cost…
• National Wealth Fund – £1.8 billion to be spent on upgrading ports, £1 billion on industrial decarbonisation, £2 billion on a Battery Power Fund, £3 billion on transitioning the steel industry and £500 million on green hydrogen manufacturing.
• Warm Homes Plan – upgrade nineteen million homes, costing £6 billion.

Reeves has chopped and changed over when that target of borrowing £28 billion will be hit. Though how she thinks she can borrow that amount at all while reducing debt and the tax burden is a question that has yet to be answered…

Full Fact has to keep correcting Labour politicians on their false NHS waiting list claims. This all started on Sunday when Rachel Reeves said on Kuennssberg  “7.8 million people are on waiting lists“. Full Fact corrected her at the time, pointing out that there are 7.8 million pathways for treatment waiting to start, and only 6.5 million unique patients – they probably got the misleading figure from an incorrect Guardian article. The fact checkers got in touch with Labour, Reeves, and The Guardian, who ignored them. Angela Eagle then used the same false statistic on Tuesday, as did Starmer at PMQs on Wednesday. These are pretty basic statistics to grasp, Labour is choosing to repeatedly dish out porkies…

Wikipedia economist Rachel Reeves has just told pool cameras that interest rate rises, which began in December 2021, are somehow the direct consequence of Liz Truss’s mini-Budget. A mini-Budget produced a full ten months later.

“Liz Truss’s mini-budget last year set in motion the economic turmoil and the increases in interest rates that we’ve experienced here in the UK.”

Truss, when not busy time travelling back to 2021, is also apparently responsible for the US economy as well. Today the US Federal Reserve held their interest rate range at 5.25%-5.5%. Guido will save Rachel the Googling and tell her 5.5 is a bigger number than 5.25. Asked about this on camera, Reeves simply ignored the question and talked about growth. A topic which has landed her in hot water before…

Rachel Reeves’ spokesperson this morning reacting to plagiarism allegations:

“These were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints.”

It looks like Rachel Reeves has been caught copying someone else’s homework. The Financial Times reports this morning that it has found at least 20 instances of plagiarism in the Shadow Chancellor’s new book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, with whole paragraphs ripped from other sources… including Wikipedia. This is a book which supposedly laments how women often don’t receive credit for their own work… 

The book’s publisher, Basic Books, have already thrown up their hands:

“When factual sentences were taken from primary sources, they should have been rewritten and properly referenced. We acknowledge this did not happen in every case.”

Here’s just one example – try to spot the difference…

Reeves: “Keynes’s key argument was that aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) determined the overall level of economic activity, and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment from which the economy would not automatically rebound.”

Wikipedia: “He argued that aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) determined the overall level of economic activity, and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment, and since wages and labour costs are rigid downwards the economy will not automatically rebound to full employment.”

A spokesperson for Reeves has already told the FT “these were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints“. The book only released this morning, and already they’re talking about reprints. Should make for an interesting Q&A session at her launch event tonight – the one Reeves had to rely on seat-filling services to bulk up the numbers…