Rachel Reeves is not up to this job. She is totally out of her debt.

You cannot tax and spend your way to prosperity. As Winston Churchill said, trying to do that is like standing in a bucket trying to pull yourself up.

Three.

Over time, in their vision, all of Europe is going to fall to Islam, not through the sword,

not through military means, but simply by outnumbering.

You know why I'm in the connoisse?

Because I was good at maths at school, but I didn't quite have a good enough personality to become an accountant.

Welcome once again to Planet Normal, the Telegraph podcast with Alison Pearson.

Hello. And me, Liam Halligan.

Should we be popping out for another lettuce?

That was the front page of the brilliant Daily Star earlier this week, as the tabloid cheekily compared Chancellor Rachel Reeves with former Prime Minister Liz Truss.

Truss was forced to resign, of course, as Prime Minister back in the autumn autumn of 2022 drummed out of office by a political media class that blamed a spike in the cost of government borrowing the ten-year guilt yield to four point two percent squarely on spending measures in the so-called mini budget statement overse statement overseen by truss. The Daily Star wondered aloud

if a putrefying lettuce would last longer than Truss's 49 days stint in number 10, and of course

the lettuce won. Now with government borrowing costs testing 5%, way higher than undertruss,

the staying power of Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being compared

to the time it takes a lettuce to rot. It would be hilarious, Alison, if it wasn't so serious.

Because when the markets demand sky high interest rates, borrowing costs for mortgages and other

household and corporate loans also go up, even if the Bank of England is cutting benchmark

interest rates. That seriously hinders growth, causing the economy to stagnate, making the public

finances even worse. Plus, more and more government money is diverted into debt service payments,

leaving less for frontline services. You've weighed in, Alison. The long-awaited

Pearson verdict on global bond markets was in Wednesday's Telegraph, link in the show notes to this

...