Following his pre-budget analysis published in the National yesterday (and available on the SSP website), SSP National co-spokesperson Colin Fox gives his ‘five takeaways’ from Rachel Reeves’ Budget:
‘STABLE FOUNDATIONS, SECURE FUTURE’ RACHEL REEVES HAS NEITHER AS SHE ANNOUNCES 250 MORE PFI CONTRACTS FOR THE NHS AND BACKTRACKS HYPOCRITICALLY ON THE TWO CHILD BENEFIT LIMIT
1. What a chaotic start!
The Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons was understandably incensed by the ‘extreme discourtesy’ after the details of Rachel Reeves’ Budget had been leaked two hours beforehand. Incensed because it vividly illustrated that our MPs were again shown to be completely out of touch with the rest of the country.
Labour MP’s in particular, waving their order papers and cheering loudly at the end of the Budget Statement, nonetheless realise they are headed for the Job Centre as things stand.
2. National Debt
Their discomfort will be nothing compared to the mood in the country after Rachel Reeves announced she is raising taxes further to pay off the national debt. A debt – let’s not forget – run up by the 2008 financial crash and the Covid pandemic.
3. “Three Prongs”
The ‘three prongs’ of her statement, as she called them, were her intention to cut NHS waiting lists; cut the cost of living; and cut the cost of borrowing. And yet it was what she did not say that was more revealing.
She didn’t mention for example that in ‘building 250 new neighbourhood health centres to ease the pressure on our NHS’ that this will be done using the thoroughly discredited PFI model.
In other words, having learned nothing from the disastrous privatisation of the NHS carried out by Tony Blair, she is set to repeat the exercise fivefold.
The story was leaked to the Financial Times yesterday [‘NHS to embrace PFI style funding in plan for hundreds of community health centres’ 24/11/25], yet she did not deny it.
Activists in Scotland must ensure this scheme is not employed at Holyrood and billions are not wasted in the same way here.
4. Two-Child Benefit Cap U-Turn
I also look forward to interviewers on TV and radio asking Rachel Reeves just when did she discover that the two-child limit on family benefits was a pernicious assault on child poverty?
I ask because in her budget last year she announced to the world she was adamant about keeping it! In this particular U-turn, she adds hypocrisy to her piety.
5. A Low Bar
Finally, throughout her budget, I was struck by how often Rachel Reeves compared her achievements [I use the word loosely] to those of Liz Truss’s government. I am surely not the only viewer who found this a tad peculiar and demonstrated what a low bar she sets herself given the fiasco of those 50 days in 2022.
All in all the measures Rachel Reeves announced today will not make a blind bit of difference to anything; not the worst crisis the NHS has ever faced, not the £2.6trillon national and certainly not the costs of living crisis facing working people the length and breadth of Britain today.
The political future of Keir Starmer’s government still hangs in the balance. That is my summation of today’s theatrics.