Rachel reeves

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Jon Cruddas is right – Miliband’s dole policy is punitive. And pointless

I’ve always admired Jon Cruddas, and worried a little at his being placed at the centre of Ed Miliband’s policy unit. What happens if he talks sense? Well, my fears were well-founded: a good dollop of common sense has emerged from Cruddas, through the medium of today’s Sunday Times splash. On 21 June, we learn, Cruddas was speaking to Compass, a left-wing policy group, and was kind (too kind) about the IPPR’s ‘Condition of Britain’ report – which I’d recommend to conservatives with a taste for schadenfreude as it’s almost comically vacuous and exposes a Labour movement entirely bereft of new ideas. Cruddas was speaking about the report, saying that it took the

Monday

Isabel Hardman

We get few answers from the Work and Pensions grudge match

Departmental questions have, by this stage of the parliament, all developed their own characters. There is the colourful combat of Treasury questions, often involving one Tory minister deploying a lengthy analogy involving handing over the keys to a car or arson to describe Ed Balls. Then there’s Michael Gove and Tristram Hunt’s lesson in rhetoric at Education questions. And then there’s the hour-long grudge match that enlightens no-one at Work and Pensions questions. Today’s session was a typical example. Labour had plenty to attack on, from the implementation of universal credit to the cost of the employment and support allowance. And the party did attack. But the questions and the

Sunday

John O'Neill

Employment is booming. What does Rachel Reeves have to add?

Here’s a funny thing: Labour claims to be the ‘party of work’, but the Tories have reasonable claim to be the workers’ party, given that they’ve overseen the creation of 1.5 million new jobs. Anyway, it was one of the slogans that shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves incanted on her Sunday Politics interview this morning, when she seemed to have a pretty torrid time of it. listen to ‘Rachel Reeves ’ on Audioboo She had to defend her party’s leader against his cratering approval ratings and the embarrassment of a leaked election strategy document which shows that people don’t trust him on immigration, the economy or welfare. And she had

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Will welfare cap vote be Miliband’s biggest rebellion?

So Rachel Reeves confirmed in the Commons today that Labour will back the welfare cap when it comes to a vote. Tory MPs cheered her as she announced this. There is a rebellion brewing on the Labour benches on this, which party sources are saying they remain ‘vigilant’ about. Some claim that this will be the biggest revolt of Miliband’s leadership. If it is, then it will have to surpass the 40 Labour MPs (39 and one teller) who rebelled against their party’s official position on welfare sanctions just over a year ago. The then Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne instructed Labour MPs to abstain on a bill

Monday

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Labour gets tough

Labour says it is tough on welfare policy. And today, the party launched its tough compulsory jobs guarantee funding pledge by looking tough too. Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves would have made a stronger Mr Steerpike quail in these hard-hitting outfits.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Why announcing a tough new welfare policy isn’t as tough as it seems for Rachel Reeves

Rachel Reeves is setting out Labour’s tough new benefits policy today. The Tories don’t need to be unduly worried, given the poll lead they enjoy on welfare matters, but just in case, Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa May have penned a joint op-ed in the Daily Mail accusing Labour of a ‘shameful betrayal’ on welfare reform and controlling immigration. They list the party’s failures in government, saying: ‘With one hand, Labour doled out millions of pounds for people to sit on benefits. With the other, they opened the door to mass migration, with those from abroad filling jobs which our own people didn’t want or couldn’t get.’ Conservative spinners, meanwhile,

Ed West Ed West

Does it matter if Tories don’t know what it’s like to be poor?

I have this theory that the reason why the British public is so hugely in favour of cutting welfare to the bone, and the British media so hostile, is that many (maybe most) journalists still depend on financial support from their parents well into their 30s. Since most media folk come from the sort of backgrounds where home ownership is expected, and yet work in an industry where the typical salary makes living anywhere near London extremely difficult, they feel too ashamed to opine on ‘scroungers’ because, well, they are scroungers. Anyway, maybe that’s what’s called projection. Most people in politics, like those in the media, tend to come from

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s minimum wage attack flops

Labour’s minimum wage debate in the Commons last night was designed mainly to humiliate the Conservatives about their past opposition to it and to remind voters that only the Labour party cares about those on low wages. But it failed on two counts. The first was that Rachel Reeves fell into the easy trap of accusing someone of missing a vote without double-checking whether this had been for a good reason (all the more surprising given the party’s recent rage over a Sun article describing Lucy Powell as ‘lazy’ when she had in fact been away on maternity leave). She laid into Vince Cable for failing to vote on Labour’s

Wednesday

Lottie Dexter

The government must prevent young people from falling into the benefits trap

Despite promises to be ‘tougher than the Tories’ with regards the welfare bill, shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves MP was today batting away headlines suggesting that Labour was considering plans to scrap benefits for the under-25s. Reeves’s insistence that neither she, nor the party, support a worthwhile report from the influential, left-of-centre think tank, the IPPR, should raise concern. Not least because the IPPR raised similar points to those of the Prime Minister in his speech at this year’s party conference. In it he outlined plans for an ‘earn or learn’ scheme and recommended that young people are taken out of the welfare system altogether. This is disappointing from a Labour

David Blackburn

Labour’s welfare worries exposed by one cheeky headline. The Tories should exploit this

The Telegraph carries a story under the title ‘Labour: We’ll scrap benefits for under 25s’. This has sent Labour supporters into mild panic. The party’s welfare spokesman, Rachel Reeves has said: ‘This is not and will not be our policy.’ ‘It’s not our plan.’ ‘It is totally not my position!’ Mark Ferguson, editor of Labour List, the grassroots website, says: ‘That all sounds pretty clear to me.’ While George Eaton of the New Statesman, who is close to the Labour leadership, has made some calls, and concluded: ‘Is Labour planning to scrap benefits for under-25s? [T]here is a definitive answer: no.’ So there you have it. The leadership and its supporters

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Same old ding-dong as Reeves and IDS face off for first time

After insisting that her appointment in no way represented a ‘lurch to the left’ at the weekend by repeating the policy pronouncements that her predecessor was allowed to come out with, Rachel Reeves pitched up at DWP questions today with the same strategy that Liam Byrne had employed when taking on the Tories on welfare. The new shadow Work and Pensions secretary decided to focus not on who was the toughest on welfare, but on the delivery questions that had occupied Byrne towards the end of his tenure. When it came to her turn at topical questions, she rose and said: ‘We on this side of the House support the

Monday

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 podcast special: Labour’s money day

On the second day of Labour’s annual conference in Brighton, The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss Ed Balls’ and Chuka Umunna’s speeches on the economy and business. We also spoke to shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rachel Reeves about what she thought of Ed Balls’ speech. You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week, or you can use the embedded player below: listen to ‘View from 22 conference special: Labour’s money day’ on Audioboo

Monday

Steerpike

A bridge too far for Ian Katz

More adventures in television from new Newsnight boss Ian Katz. Fresh from his truthful-if-embarrassing slating of Labour’s Rachel Reeves, I hear that Katz has upset another Labour big-wig, Alistair Darling. Apparently, Katz wants to shoot a Scottish referendum debate on a real bridge (presumably the 130-metre Union Bridge in Berwick) between Scotland and England. After the debate, he proposed that members of the audience would ‘vote with their feet’ by walking to either end of the bridge. Darling, who is leading the pro-Union campaign, was not sold on the idea of unionists walking to the English side of river to show their support. PS: Another BBC source says that Katz ‘wanted to

Thursday

Hugo Rifkind

Boring politicians are a threat to democracy. That means you, Rachel Reeves

I’ve never met the woman that the Newsnight editor Ian Katz this week accidentally described as ‘boring, snoring Rachel Reeves’, so for all I know, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury might be an absolute riot. Although actually, writing that, it occurs to me that maybe I have and she was just too boring for me to remember. Perhaps we sat next to each other at some sort of function, and had a fun chat about, ooh, fiscal prudence in a post-OBR paradigm, which involved her talking and me going ‘Mmmm’, and left her thinking, ‘He seems nice, I wonder if we’ll be friends?’ as she walked dreamily to

Tuesday

Hugo Rifkind

Ian Katz was right the first time. And Rachel Reeves was being boring on purpose

I’ve never met the woman that the Newsnight editor Ian Katz last night accidentally described as ‘boring, snoring Rachel Reeves’, so for all I know, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury might be an absolute riot. Although actually, writing that, it occurs to me that maybe I have and she was just too boring for me to remember. Perhaps we sat next to each other at some sort of function, and had a fun chat about, ooh, fiscal prudence in a post-OBR paradigm, which involved her talking and me going ‘Mmmm’, and left her thinking, ‘He seems nice, I wonder if we’ll be friends?’ as she walked dreamily to

Steerpike Steerpike

The curse of Newsnight strikes again

Poor Ian Katz. Just days into his new job as editor of Newsnight and he’s already in hot water. Accidentally panning a guest behind their back is hardly the most dignified of starts. Mr Steerpike would love to know who this was really meant to be seen by rather than Katz’s thousands of followers: While Rachel Reeves is undoubtedly tedious, it’s hardly a good idea to actually say it. Katz’s former Guardian colleagues will no doubt be happy to see him enjoying his new outlet. So what are the repercussions of the blunder? Not great if the reaction of Labour’s attack dog Michael Dugher is anything to go by: ‘Good luck

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Well said Ian Katz. It’s Labour who should be ashamed, not you

I see the new Newsnight editor, Ian Katz, is in trouble for having ‘tweeted’ about the performance of one of the programme’s guests in an ungallant manner. He described the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rachel Reeves, as being ‘boring snoring’ during her interview with Paxo. The Labour Party has demanded an apology and suggests that Katz’s comments ‘undermine the neutrality of the programme’. As a party member, could I just be allowed to say ‘piss off Labour?’  Katz’s tweet – and why he feels the need to utilise this medium Christ alone knows – revealed no such thing. In fact, I suspect Katz is a Labour supporter. He

Monday

Tuesday

Steerpike

The glass houses of parliament

The Labour Party is most exercised by the news, broken by the Spectator, that Economist journalist Christopher Lockwood has been appointed to the Downing Street Policy Unit. Poor old Lockwood is charged with being a bit posh, knowing David Cameron personally and attending a good school. This amounts to a crime against humanity in Labour land. Rent-a-quote Rachel Reeves, who moonlights as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, took time off her maternity leave to lambast the elitist chumocracy at the heart of Dave’s government. All of which is a bit rich because the Labour Party indulges this particular establishment vogue to a tee. Rachel Reeves’ sister Ellie is on

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Labour prepares for the worst (good news on the economy)

Whether or not he did accidentally suggest that he knew what tomorrow’s GDP figures will be at Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron did have a jolly good point about the way Labour responds to good news on the economy. He told Ed Miliband: ‘It’s only a bad week if you think it’s bad that unemployment’s coming down, it’s only a bad week if you regret inflation coming down… every piece of good news sends that team into a complete decline, well, I can tell him, the good news will keep on coming.’ As Fraser blogged at the weekend, Ed Miliband’s strategy is predicated on the government continually cocking up. It’s