Mark Carruthers assesses the implications of the Spring Statement with John Campbell, Caroline Keenan, Andrew Webb and Enda McClafferty.
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0:00.0 | It might not have been a full-blown budget, but it's still been grabbing the headlines on and off for weeks. |
0:05.8 | Today's spring statement was never meant to involve major surgery, but with a sluggish UK economy and a changing global landscape, |
0:13.6 | the Chancellor has found herself and her economic strategy, front and centre of the UK's national conversation. |
0:20.3 | That's what we're discussing in this edition |
0:22.4 | of Red Lines. And John Campbell, why did what Rachel Reeves had to say this afternoon, and we're |
0:28.0 | recording this barely two hours after she sat down, matter so much? Because I think it shows the |
0:34.3 | direction of travel for the UK economy and particularly UK public finances. |
0:39.7 | And it leaves up in the possibility that Rachel Reeves is going to have to come back for more |
0:45.2 | in terms of potential tax or borrowing or else she is going to get very lucky. |
0:51.5 | And I think one of the other things it shows today is this increasingly looks like a mad way to run an economy, something we maybe get into |
0:59.5 | later. And if we had a pound for every time she and those close to her used the phrase |
1:06.0 | the world has changed today and in the run-up to today, we'd be able to have a nice dinner out. |
1:12.0 | Yeah, that is increasingly something we're going to hear from Labour government, |
1:15.7 | and I think in the run-up to the next budget, it's going to have implications |
1:18.9 | because if the world has changed, then do your previous assumptions around borrowing |
1:24.1 | and around tax remain unchanged? |
1:27.3 | As of today, they do, but how sustainable is that going to be? |
1:31.7 | Andrew Webb, there's a sense that the ground is moving beneath the Chancellor's feet. So is her performance today, |
1:37.9 | do you think likely to stabilise things to any great extent? I think today she was really starting a fight for her economic |
1:44.9 | credibility and she has boxed herself in with the no new taxes approach that she took in the |
1:52.3 | autumn budget. I think that it's her own made-up fiscal rule which is on bending on that |
1:58.3 | which then led to what we've seen today. |
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