The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, today declares in The Mail on Sunday that she is committed to economic growth and prosperity.
Indeed, she says she is pledged to lead ‘the most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury in our country’s history’.
Everyone must be pleased by that, as without such policies, the country will decline and fail.
She even compares herself with Margaret Thatcher’s bold chancellor, Nigel Lawson, famous for his ‘Big Bang’ deregulation of the City of London in 1986.
Ms Reeves promises her own ‘Big Bang’, saying: ‘Previous governments have talked about a big bang on tax or regulation. I want to lead a big bang on growth because that is the only way we can fix the foundations, so we can rebuild Britain and make every part of our country better off.’
The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has pledged in today’s Mail on Sunday to lead the ‘most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury in our country’s history’
She makes a special point of pledging to improve the position of pensioners, while at the same time ensuring that this country’s pension schemes invest in fast-growing British firms, so providing a new locomotive to drive growth and to benefit investors. She suggests that £8 billion of investment could be released in this way.
She also predicts that this policy could boost some pension pots by around £11,000, by ensuring they are well-managed and deliver better value for money. These are praiseworthy targets – and they contrast sharply with Whitehall suggestions that the new Chancellor is under pressure from the Treasury to launch an Inheritance Tax raid on some types of pension savings.
Like every Chancellor in modern history, Rachel Reeves also promises to get a grip on waste, but perhaps she will forgive us for wondering if that will add up to much.
This is the life Chancellors must lead, an endless battle between politics and finance, ceaseless lobbying by Cabinet colleagues for more money, trying to keep down politically sensitive taxes, and the ever-growing need to pay interest on the huge loans that still hang round the nation’s neck.
One illustration of this struggle is our information that Ms Reeves – backed by PM Sir Keir Starmer – is also supportive of the long-delayed third runway at Heathrow Airport, which might seem to be an ideal part of her proposed ‘dash for growth’.
Yet here and in other areas she faces the potential opposition of the Green lobby, and of its Cabinet champion, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.
Unlike more centralised and autocratic nations, Britain’s government cannot just build new airports, roads or railway lines.
There are plenty of forces and laws that can, and will, get in the way, and plenty of people ready to use them.
However much the new government rips up regulations, it will still encounter the growing power of environmental campaigners, linked as they so often are to anti-oil, anti-road and net zero lobbyists.
Ms Reeves will find she comes up against resistance, including from the Green lobby and its Cabinet champion Ed Miliband, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who is keeper of the socialist flame
Ms Reeves will also find she comes up against Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, fulfilling her role as the keeper of the socialist flame and pursuing her package of workers’ rights.
More technocratic ministers may hope to sideline Ms Rayner, but the signs are that she will be a tough voice for Labour’s traditional and trade union wing, not necessarily as committed to dashing for growth as the Chancellor is.
This is, after all, a Labour government and many in the new Parliamentary Labour Party will be enthusiasts for the standby Labour weapons of tax and spend.
It is a pity that the Chancellor has pandered to these forces by her insistence that she has ‘inherited the worst set of economic circumstances since World War II’. But we still hope that she will stick by her pro-growth, pro-business message.