Next up to try and explain Labour’s position on the Single Market, it’s @RachelReevesMP. Can she be any clearer than @JennyChapman? Hmm. pic.twitter.com/V81KMp5HOi
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) 16 January 2018
Now Rachel Reeves completely caught on the hop trying to describe Labour’s ever-uncertain position on the single market and Brexit in general. You can’t blame her…
Footage has emerged from 2010, that shows a newbie MP failing to tell the difference between the debt and the deficit.
Despite boasting of her background in financial services, asked very clearly what the current national debt was, newly elected Rachel Reeves replied: “£156 billion” – the size of the UK budget deficit when the Tories came to power in 2010. She was speaking to Martin Durkin, for his documentary ‘Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story’:
Reeves would be rapidly promoted through a series of Labour financial briefs…
Meet Alyessa. Vox-popped in Birmingham by the BBC this morning, she revealed why she’s voting Labour:
“Because Labour are the party that help people on benefits.”
Despite some vague tough talk from Rachel Reeves, Labour opposed every single one of IDS’s reforms and their client supporters are grateful. It’s the dirty little secret that the Labour Party refuse to accept: Benefit reform is hugely popular.
Polling by Ipsos Mori found that:
Being the ‘party that help people on benefits’ may soothe your base, but the public don’t like it…
How does the aspiring Work and Pensions Secretary want to raise money for Labour’s new flagship policy in Scotland?
Reeves wants to scrap the bedroom ‘tax’ and “use the savings” to raise £175 million. But, as should be obvious from Labour’s name for the policy, the bedroom ‘tax’ actually reduces government spending. Saving around a billion pounds so far in fact. Therefore scrapping it would not, as Reeves thinks, ‘save £175 million’. On the contrary, it would cost over a billion. Not like Reeves used to be at the heart of Labour’s Treasury team or anything…
UPDATE:
Following her comments denigrating the unemployed, Labour’s grassroots have turned on Rachel Reeves:
Disgruntled Labour members can join the Green Party here…
What will Labour’s grassroots make of Rachel Reeves distancing her party from people receiving unemployment benefits? The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary is talking tough in the Guardian today, in very un-Guardian-y language:
“We are not the party of people on benefits. We don’t want to be seen, and we’re not, the party to represent those who are out of work. Labour are a party of working people, formed for and by working people.”
Are Labour trying to get more of their supporters to follow in Jack Monroe’s footsteps? Slagging off their core vote is a bold move…
The Huffington Post are desperately trying to spin for Balls, resorting to real barrel scraping tactics:
From: Money4Media United Kingdom
Date: 17 February 2015 12:26:49 GMT
Subject: Journalist Alert: The Huffington Post, Asa BennettTax Experts on Receipts/accountancy Needed
I’m looking for a good tax expert who could help for a potential piece, aiming to debunk the Daily Mail’s suggestion that Ed Balls is a “total hypocrite” as he hasn’t asked his window cleaner for a receipt, despite suggesting it would be right to do that for odd jobs…
Contact Person: Asa Bennett
Publication: The Huffington Post
Deadline for responses: Date: 17/02/2015 Time: 2:30PM
An accountant that will say the opposite to reality? Try PWC…
Meanwhile, on the World at One, Rachel Reeves just totally contradicted Balls. The Shadow Chancellor said on Sunday:
“The right thing to do if you are having somebody cut your hedge for a tenner is to make sure they give you their name and address and a receipt and a record for the fact that you have paid them.Over my life – have I ever given people a tenner and not got a receipt for it? Probably yes. Since I’ve been involved in politics and Treasury matters, absolutely I think it’s really important to have a record.”
Today Reeves says the exact opposite:
“It’s not always that easy to get a receipt… it’s not the wrong thing to do.”
Who speaks for Labour?
Brillo was another happy reader this morning, skewering Rachel Reeves on Labour’s energy price “freeze” spin. Reeves admits things were different “at the time“, and says that now “the world has changed”. She also confirmed the “cap” is a new policy:
AN: “I think honesty matters here… When you announced this policy the only fear was that prices were going up. It never crossed your mind that wholesale prices might come down… so you used the language ‘freeze’ and you never used the language ‘cap’. Now you’ve been forced to change. I think it would be honest if you admitted that… Did you use the word cap?”
RR: “We didn’t use the word cap.”
Ed’s flagship policy is in tatters…
“Under-employment is a huge problem in David Cameron’s economy,” declared Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Rachel Reeves in September, warning “millions of people [are] stuck in part-time jobs unable to get the hours of work they want”. According to Reeves the scourge of under-employment “has deepened the cost-of-living crisis and pushed up the social security bill”, but, she promised, “Labour will make work pay”.
Today Reeves is advertising for an “exciting opportunity” to be her new Political Adviser. Naturally the job is part-time, with the successful candidate only required to work “2.5 days per week”. One more added to the “millions of people stuck in part-time jobs unable to get the hours of work they want”…
Last week Rachel Reeves let her guard down at a meeting of Christians on the Left, formerly known as the Christian Socialist Movement:
‘It will be much better if we can say that all of the changes that the Government have introduced we can reverse and all benefits can be universal.’
Much better? Really? That’s not what the sums say…
Implementing working-age Universal Benefits alone after the next election would cost Rachel £180 billion a year, which is double the benefits bill now. If you then include reversing all of IDS’s savings made in this parliament – like £2.1 billion to Housing Benefit Reforms (this year alone) or £1.3 billion to Employment and Support Allowance – you’re looking at another £50 billion needed. That takes Rachel’s bill to £230 billion . How can that figure possibly be seen as ‘much better’?
The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary admitting that she’s against the principle of Welfare Reform, but has been forced into it, hardly fills you with confidence about how she would act should she get her hands on the moneybags. Tomorrow Labour will finally back a welfare cap, something that they have voted against three times before, yet behind closed doors what has actually changed?
Michael Crick on the closure of the National Organisation of Labour Students…
“This must be the only case in Labour or Conservative history where a party youth organisation has been closed down for not being extreme enough!”
