Who's in charge here? Rachel Reeves or the markets?

I'm going to say Rachel Reeves.

I would always say the markets in the end.

I'm not just our third way and say a bit of both.

So if you cover the markets, you think it's the politicians,

and if you cover politics, you think it's the markets.

Just to be fair, the famed James Carville quote was not,

I'd like to be reincarnated as Rachel Reeves. I'd like to be reincarnated

as the bond market. Welcome to political fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher.

Coming up, financial markets have soured on the Chancellor, but what can she do about it?

And what does it mean for the government's

spending plans? Plus, we'll be getting into this week's big opposition speeches from

Kemi Badenock and Ed Davy. And to discuss it all, I'm joined in the studio by my FT colleagues

Robert Shimsley. Hi, Robert. Hello, Lucy. And Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen. Hi, Lucy. And we have the

FTs market columnist Katie Martin. Hi, Katie. Hi, Lucy. And we have the FTs markets columnist Katie Martin. Hi, Katie. Thanks for having me.

So, Katie, we have to kick off with you explaining to us a little bit about what's been going on. But first, I'll just read the take of the FT's editorial board this week. the lack of confidence in the British economy has become

infectious. From businesses, it has now spread to financial markets. Tell us what's been going

on and how serious it is. So it's been a pretty lively start of the year for UK markets.

What we've had is sort of at the very start of the year, really quite an

ugly drop in UK government bond prices. And that pushes borrowing costs up for all of us and

for the government and for everybody else. And it did get quite messy on a couple of occasions.

But actually what's going on here to my mind is that the UK market is following the US.

...