Echoes of Rishi Sunak in Rachel Reeves’s rite of passage speech

Published

1 year ago

March 20, 2024

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The Mais lecture has become a kind of rite of passage for all aspirant chancellors.

This annual speech, held at the Bayes Business School in the City of London, was where Nigel Lawson laid out his thinking about reforming the economy in the 1980s.

It was where George Osborne provided his plan for his first 50 days in office, where Gordon Brown explained the economics behind his policies.

It is, in short, a very big deal.

Money blog: Big drop in inflation predicted

So the merest fact that Rachel Reeves has given this lecture is, in a sense, a part of the story of her ascendancy. If the polls are to be believed, she will shortly be Britain’s next chancellor (its first female chancellor, believe it or not).

This is her moment on the stage, to expand on the economic foundations for her time in government.

So in one respect it feels a little churlish to accuse her of providing too little information on the policies she’ll be implementing if she does enter Number 11. The Mais Lecture is all about technocracy, not about big spending pledges.

And on the technocratic front, this lecture certainly delivered. There will be a beefed up role for the enterprise and growth unit inside the Treasury, a new task for the Office for Budget Responsibility to ponder the importance of investment.

And she confirmed, in the most explicit terms yet, that she will not change the Bank of England‘s 2% inflation target – and that her fiscal rules will closely resemble the government’s current ones.

A Tory-sounding speech

But, as you can tell from the last two points there, it is hard, reading the lecture as a whole, to divine a dramatic change from the current nature of government policy.

While the shadow chancellor talks approvingly about the US Democrats’ subsidy schemes for boosting green investment, there is no hint that the UK will do anything similar. Indeed, Ms Reeves has just recently cancelled her plan to increase annual government green investment to £28bn a year.

Perhaps the simplest accusation one can direct at Ms Reeves is that her plan sounds deceptively similar to the ones proposed by the current government.

Indeed, the three priorities from Rishi Sunak’s own Mais lecture of 2022 – encouraging businesses to invest more, improving technical skills and cementing Britain’s position as the most innovative economy in the world – all feature in Ms Reeves’s own lecture.

Now on the one hand, you might well expect journalists, who like news, to complain about the lack of big news in this speech.

But on the other hand it’s not clear that the policy plans provided by the Labour Party are in any way proportionate to the scale of challenge it suggests it faces.

Moreover, while George Osborne committed in his Mais lecture to an emergency budget within 50 days of getting into office, followed shortly by a spending review, Ms Reeves still has yet to confirm she’ll have an emergency budget soon after the next election.

Any policies ahead of the election?

At this stage, a lot of people are rightly wondering whether Labour has any sizeable policies left ahead of the election – especially given the Conservatives have just stolen their plan to abolish non-dom status at this month’s budget.

As it happens, Labour do have plans for an emergency budget within 100 days of the election, and a spending review too.

But they are wary of talking about them too soon – both because of the risk of market instability and because they are bedding in for a long campaign and a late election.

The Labour strategists believe it is much more sensible at this point of the electoral cycle – with many months likely left before an election – to emphasise stability and good sense rather than to throw titbits of policy out there into the open.

They suspect that any policies they announce will likely be stolen by the Conservatives – and they might have a point.

UK

Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Published

10 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Liverpool players past and present have joined the family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva for their funeral in Portugal.

A service was held in the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in their hometown of Gondomar near Porto in northern Portugal on Saturday morning.

Mourners lined the streets and some in the crowd clapped as the brothers’ coffins were carried into the church.

The funeral – in pictures

Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.

His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.

Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.

Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.

Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.

Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.

‘More than a friend’

In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”

Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”

Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.

‘With us forever’

Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.

“Their spirit will be with us forever.”

The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.

He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.

“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”

The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.

No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.

Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.

Flowers have been left outside Anfield, where flags have been lowered to half-mast and all club shops, museums and tours have been closed until Monday.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

13 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

14 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.