The reckoning has arrived

Damian Pudner has an interesting and topical CAPX piece on the continuing disaster that is the Starmer Reeves duo.


Rachel Reeves is finished, and Keir Starmer is exposed

• Labour’s economic strategy was a mirage – now it is unravelling in real time
• The idea that Reeves can now deliver a politically tolerable Autumn Budget is laughable
• The Chancellor is discovering that tone is not policy, and style is not substance

It’s not yet official, but the markets have already passed their verdict. Gilt yields surged again yesterday – with ten-year rates brushing 4.68% – as investors digested yet another fiscal U-turn and a visibly shaken Chancellor. The message could not be clearer: there is no plan, no discipline and no credibility left. The much vaunted £10 billion in fiscal ‘headroom’ has been squandered. Growth remains anaemic, and Britain’s mounting debt burden is once again in the crosshairs. Rachel Reeves may still occupy the Treasury – but politically, she is done.


The whole piece may be familiar ground but is well worth reading. In Starmer and Reeves, we see not only political failure, but also the failure of narrative politics.

A political narrative for voters to swallow isn't enough. Maybe it was in the past when the government machine was less inefficient, corrupt and self-serving, but it isn't enough now. As Pudner says, the age of cost-free politics is over, the reckoning has arrived. It has arrived for voters too. 
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The problem is not that Reeves is uniquely incompetent. She isn’t. The problem is that Labour’s entire economic strategy was a mirage, a carefully choreographed illusion of stability that collapsed in contact with reality. Now it is unravelling in real time.

And Starmer? He cannot escape the fallout. Whether Reeves is sacked before or after the Budget, it will be under a Prime Minister who pledged not to raise taxes on ordinary people – and who now must oversee exactly that.

The age of cost-free politics is over. The reckoning has arrived. And despite all the promises, it will be Labour that delivers it.

Reeves is finished. Starmer is exposed. And both voters – and markets – are watching.