On January 13, The i reported that Sir Keir is positioning Rachel Reeves as his election running mate – a horrible American approach to politics, but go with it – and relegating Angela Rayner as his number two:
“But inevitably, the move to promote Ms Reeves more in the public eye has prompted claims from allies of Ms Rayner that the deputy Labour leader has been “sidelined”.
Relations between Sir Keir and his official deputy came under intense strain in 2021 after a botched attempt to strip Ms Rayner of part of her role in the party.”
Now analysis of who Labour is choosing to put up as their spokespeople on TV media rounds appears to prove this theory. Numbers worked out by Guido shows that out of 24 shadow ministers put forward onto TV in 2022, Rayner was the sixth lowest, with just seven morning media rounds that year.
Reeves on the other hand was easily at the top, with 22 morning round appearances followed by Lisa Nandy and Pat McFadden on 19.
Rayner only beat John Healey (6), Louise Haigh (4), Rosena Allin-Khan (3), Khalid Mahmood (2), Jim McMahon (2) and Preet Gill (1). Rosena Allin-Khan of course perceived as another disloyal shadow minister…
Some say Starmer’s Labour is too London-centric. North London-centric to be precise. On Saturday, Rachel Reeves delivered a speech to the Fabian Society praising the eugenicist Beatrice Webb as her heroine. That wasn’t the only embarrassing thing in the speech. She referred twice to the Hornsey wind farm development, an exciting prospect for the locals in Hornsey and their near neighbours in Muswell Hill and Hampstead. It falls to Guido to disappoint the citizens of NW twee, Reeves actually meant the Hornsea wind farm development off the Yorkshire coast. Hornsey is in North London, not far from Starmer’s beloved Arsenal Football Club, which is now Labour’s true heartland…
Speaking from Davos today, Rachel Reeves said:
“I wouldn’t blame the bond vigilantes for what happened in the UK last September, it was the fault of the government who announced £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts, and then went on the television and said there’s more to come.”
Labour is on shaky ground here, given that despite repeated promises from Starmer that all their policies will be fully costed, the party’s announced that exact same number – £45 billion – in unfunded spending promises since January 6 alone. Around £1,650 per household…
In total, the last 13 days’ worth of uncosted Labour spending tots up to the exact amount Rachel Reeves claims caused a financial catastrophe under Liz Truss. Hardly the most reassuring prospectus for a ‘government in waiting’…
The Sun got an interesting briefing from the Shadow Chancellor’s office on Sunday night, revealing that Rachel Reeves is now backing a freeze of fuel duty to “help hard-pressed motorists”. Freezing fuel duty given current rates of inflation would cost the taxpayers around £6 billion…
Reeves told the paper:
“With so many families and businesses reliant on their cars, the government must rule out yet another fuel duty rise at the Budget to ease some of those pressures and prevent yet another shock to our economy.”
However given major questions about whether voters can trust a word Sir Keir’s Labour says, Reeves will struggle to explain why she appears to have performed such a volte-face on the issue of freezing fuel duty.
Responding to Rishi’s March 2020 budget, the then-backbencher Reeves slammed the government for spending £2.7 billion on “yet another fuel duty freeze”, despite COP26 in Glasgow being just around the corner:
“Yet what have we had in the Budget today? We have had £27 billion to invest in 4,000 miles of roads, and the fuel duty freeze, which costs £2.7 billion, but just £6 billion for local transport and a mere £140 million for a one-year extension of the electric vehicle grants. Frankly, that does not speak of a Government who recognise the scale of the challenge we face”
Later on, she tweeted that “yet another fuel duty freeze” was the sign the government “don’t recognise the challenge of the climate emergency.”
It wasn’t just Reeves slamming the government’s now-relatively modest spending on a fuel duty freeze. Lisa Nandy, the now-Shadow Levelling Up secretary also slammed the decision given:
“Car usage is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions – but instead of investment in low carbon transport, they’ve frozen fuel duty.”
We’re now supposed to believe the Labour Party sincerely believes in spending £6 billion on freezing fuel duty. Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides – provided voters can afford to fill up their cars…
Today’s GDP figures provided the smallest imaginable crumb of comfort to Jeremy Hunt, with the UK economy seeing an unexpected uptick in November of 0.1%, mainly thanks to Brits getting smashed during the world cup. We could drink ourselves into prosperity if we each put in the effort…
Naturally Labour honed in on the more negative picture from the quarter as a whole, with a 0.3% shrink in the three months to November. Rachel Reeves put out a statement shortly after the figures were published, slamming “another page in the book of failure that is the Tory record on growth.”
What Reeves didn’t mention is that the 0.3% fall in GDP was, as Reuters write, “driven by a 0.6% fall in output in September when many businesses closed to mark Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.”
Not only can the death of the sovereign and subsequent mourning period hardly be laid at the door of the current government, Rachel Reeves – indeed every sitting Labour MP – stood on a 2019 manifesto promising not one, not two but four extra bank holidays every year. Something Guido notes the cost of which were not included in Labour’s costings document that year…
