Starmer and Reeves promised honesty about public finances. Can they stay the course? | Tax and spending

During the first debate on the first television in the general elections last summer, Keir Starmer used an enthusiastic and unexpected applause from Salford audience.

Orum I don’t act as if there was a magic wand to correct everything overnight, ”he said. Labor strategists were surprised by applauding and encouraged him to re -talk about it in the future.

The Prime Minister said he decided not to fall into the same trap as many leaders in front of him, although his assistants make promises that will never be kept due to the situation of public finances.

Rachel Reeves intended to withdraw the message that Tories would blame for the sad situation of the country’s books.

Last July, the deputies said in a statement, the winter reduced the fuel allowance, Jeremy Hunt immediately reset the “black hole”. “This excessive level of expenditure is not sustainable. It was left uncontrolled, it is a risk for economic stability,” he warned.

A month later, Starmer’s gloom -loaded speech at the Downing Street Garden underlined the government’s economic pessimism. Im I must be honest with you: Things are worse than we imagine, ”he said.

Along the way, somewhere, the determination to be ruthlessly honest, what could be, what could be, was removed from the track. Some governments are concerned that Starmer – in the face of survey ratings – may have lost their nerves.

Ministers argued that winter fuel payments were not sustainable, but reversed the deductions after the bad local election results. They emphasized the financial advantages of disability benefit changes and as a result they lost the support of their deputies.

However, since the Budget Responsibility Office (OBR) is clearly clarified this week, there are intense pressures on public finances in the longer term, including the inevitable increase in the cost of state pensions.

OBR President Richard Hughes stressed that this is due to its triple key policy and the design of the aging society of England. “The United Kingdom Public Finance is in an unsustainable position in the long run. Britain cannot meet the promises to the public,” he warned.

In the Konak home speech next week, the chancellor will appeal to the Obr report and again, the crime finger in Tories will show a historical high level of the national debt, spend more than 100 billion £ a year for debt interest-and interest rates are still getting rid of Liz Truss’s mini budget.

Treasury resources will argue that there is nothing “progressive ında about having higher debt. By lending more from the table and the government opposed to squeezing more arms, which leaves a tax. The chancellor is expected to put a tax on the autumn budget by freezing the income tax thresholds potentially.

Paul Johnson, the outgoing director of the Institute of Financial Research, told BBC’s Week in the Westminster program, “All governments… As a series of individual options for every budget, the bride forgets what is happening almost last year and the future.” “I am a little worried that we are in the same place as this government. It sounds like we will make another tactical decision to answer, regardless of this year’s financial situation.”

Ruth Curtice, General Manager of the Solution Foundation Thinktank, said that despite the savagery of taxes and expenditures in tax and expenditures for the last 12 months, politicians did not encounter a fundamental question.

“We do not have a great debate that the state is much larger than before it is before. Does the country want to pay it with higher taxes or to reduce it again?”

Authorized, Reeves and its predecessors said that the exchange of slaps faced with a continuous weakness of the England’s economy after a series of shocks-Global financial accident, Pandemi and Russia’s energy crisis occupied Ukraine.

“Basically, this comes from this lack of growth in the economy. Since 2010, growth has disappointed, and we have not really encountered that it means that we are poorer as a country.”

The latest growth figures showing that the UK economy unexpectedly shrunk unexpectedly underlined the point. People’s pockets are felt most: wages have become stagnant in most of the last decade.

Johnson said, “There is a reason why voters worried about it, that is, they spend 15 years without an effective paid increase.

“When you don’t have a growth, it is a zero -totaled game. It means more money for a group of people and less money for the other. This government’s discourse is correct: growth, growth, growth. We are stuck in this apocalypse cycle without growth.”

Rob Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said, “Every time you look at the survey on this issue, the reaction is deeply depressed against the situation of politicians and becomes a little more sympathetic.

“Because what people will say to the surveyors over and over again, they want to spend more money on what they love, and they don’t want their taxes to rise, and someone they don’t like needs to pay for it.”

The worker still hopes to jump a growth that would alleviate the pressures on public finances – but in a year and in autumn, a crisis has not yet happened with a budget.

Both of them would allow them to receive a more difficult message about economic facts – Donald Trump’s trade tariffs or increasing defense expenditures – from both potential pivot points.

However, government sources argue that Reeves’ decision to adhere to their imposed financial rules. “They are deliberately designed to carry public financing to a sustainable contact. They do not impose themselves, cold economic realities,” he said.

“We were honest about the need to improve public finances. We took some important steps. Was it painless? No. No, no, we have to get a concept in daily expenditures by saying no. This does not move away from the challenge, it caught it.”