Labour confronts £20bn black hole
Political Fix
Financial Times
4.2 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 July 2024
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The chancellor Rachel Reeves is about to confront the British public with the size of the black hole in the country’s finances. A funding shortfall of about £20bn is likely to lead to tax rises at the Budget later this year. So — how to fix the problem? The FT’s political editor George Parker sits down with colleagues Stephen Bush and Robert Shrimsley to consider the government’s options. Plus, the FT’s infrastructure correspondent Gill Plimmer outlines the scale of the debacle that is the cancellation of the high-speed rail link between Birmingham and Manchester.
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Follow George on X @GeorgeWParker, Stephen @stephenkb. Robert @robertshrimsley, Gill @gillplimmer1
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Presented by George Parker. Produced by Audrey Tinline.
The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:20.4 | Watch Vanta's on-demand demo at Vanta.com slash F-T. That's V-A-N-T dot com slash F-T. Hello and welcome to political fix from the Financial Times with me George |
| 0:38.8 | Parker in the hot seat while Lucy Fisher is off sunning herself in warmer climbs. |
| 0:44.1 | On the menu today, race for tax rises. |
| 0:47.5 | Chancellor Rachel Reeves is to set out what she claims as the full extent of the mess |
| 0:52.1 | that Tories have left behind. So is she just |
| 0:54.6 | looking for excuses to pull up taxes and where will the pain fall? Plus taking the |
| 1:00.0 | train between Birmingham and Manchester, we'll hear why the government is telling people not to bother. |
| 1:05.2 | To discuss it all, we have in the studio my FD colleagues Robert Shrimsley... |
| 1:09.6 | Hi George. And Stephen Bush. |
| 1:11.6 | Hi George. |
| 1:13.0 | So the UK's new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves will address the House of Commons |
| 1:19.8 | on Monday and she's expected to lay out the full scale of the financial pressures |
| 1:24.3 | and there are predictions this could translate into extra tax rises worth according |
| 1:28.2 | to one analyst between 10 and 25 billion pounds come the budget. |
| 1:33.0 | Robert, the government comes into office, |
| 1:35.0 | it finds things that even worse than they thought |
| 1:37.0 | decides to pull up taxes, |
| 1:39.0 | who'd have seen that coming? |
... |
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