Is Rachel Reeves serious?

In her defence... if she is not the major earner in her household (I suspect as an MP, she is not), then the household's budget might be balanced perfectly well but her payments out require to be topped up by cash infusion from her partner as they are not entirely covered by her own salary. There would be nothing odd with that arrangement: if she makes all the childcare and mortgage payments plus personal finance on a car, say, she could readily blow through her MP salary living in London.

If she is paying all the childcare costs she needs marital advice. There is no evidence that that is the case.
I actually had that arrangement, I earned less than my husband as I worked part time, so he put part of his salary in my account. I would not have pretended that my household income was a problem.

Oreo

Oh for heavens sake! Stop all the defensive nonsense for what she said.If it had been a tory MP you would be up in arms.
It’s yet another politician, in this case just happens to be on the Labour front bench pretending their outgoings are exceeding their incomings!Look, I’m just like any other struggling family it’s saying, I feel your pain yada yada.No Rachel, you really don’t as you aren’t struggling financially.
I’m a Labour voter and it makes me cringe.

Who is that addressed to? If you are talking to me, then it's not 'defensive nonsense', I can assure you. And if you're talking to someone else, it is still not defensive nonsense. I would not have been up in arms' had a Tory MP made money from writing a book and got a few PR freebies. It's par for the course, and I am on record as saying that even Sunak, who is the epitome of a very rich man making policies for the poor, should not be blamed for having money. There is enough to blame him for when it comes to his politics, but his personal circumstances are his own.

We have no idea about RR (or anyone else's) financial commitments, and I find it disturbing in any context when people think they know what others 'can afford'. Again, I am on record for saying that people claiming to know who 'can afford' to pay for prescriptions, or care homes or whatever have no way of corroborating their claims. It's narrow-minded and petty to assume that because you (generic) 'could afford' to live on £X then someone else with entirely different circumstances should be able to do the same. Plus, it's entirely irrelevant, and in many ways is meaningless. What does it mean to be able to 'afford' something? Simply having the money to buy it? Even if that means going without something else? Or does it mean being able to buy it without thinking about the rest of your budget? If that's the case is that not why people save, and budget, and work? Not everyone can achieve that level of comfort, but it's an aim for most of us, and without that aim there would be no point in striving at all.

In a free country, nobody has a right to tell others how they should spend their own money, so long as they do so legally, and have come by it ethically. To set some sort of bar at which people 'can afford' to live would drag everyone down to a base level and there would be no incentive to do well at anything, as success would have negative consequences.

The truth is that prices have risen and incomes have not. Whether someone has an income of £500k a year or £5k a year, if they are used to spending close to that amount they will find it more difficult to manage than they did before the cost of living went through the roof. Moralising is pointless - we don't live in an equal society. The important thing is that those making policies abide by them, and that they do the best they can to ensure that as many of the public benefit from those policies as possible, not just their cronies.

I really don't want to fall into the trap of even wondering what RR's budget might be, but most MPs (particularly cabinet members of all sides) need to run two houses, which is going to be expensive, and if people aren't paid for things like writing books they won't bother, and everyone's lives will be the poorer for having no Arts, education or entertainment (or only that produced by those who 'can afford' to work for nothing, at least).

I'm confused. The OP says that RR made that statement on GB news, then another poster says they read the DM account.

Did the OP see the GB News item, or a clip of it? Or did she read about it in the DM or similar?

Is RR being actually quoted verbatim?

Good post at 10.59 Doodledog

Yes to Doodledog 👍🏻

Maizie D The clip is available to see online - Guido Fawkes. I believe full interview with Christopher Hope will be also online. I have only just seen the DM article which is very uninspiring. You can check for yourself as to accuracy.
My husband thinks the interview was doctored but I don’t think so!

In many ways I often thought RR would have been a good leader of the Labour Party having listened to some of her speeches, I find her more impressive than Keir Starmer, but that's just a personal opinion, maybe laced with the fact that it's about time Labour had a woman at the helm.

Nevertheless, I thought she showed an amazing lack of judgement when she jumped to the defence of Alison Rose, with something along these lines of "misogyny and bullying removed her from her position at Coutts" Really! she broke a cardinal rule in discussing a client's private affairs. I personally care not one iota that the client in question was populist and reviled personality, Nigel Farage, it's all about the breaching of confidentiality and boy did she, Alison Rose pick the wrong person there to have a indiscreet snigger about. There it was again that complete lack of foresight not to mention integrity. Farage nailed her and rightly so imo. So maybe Dame Alison's a mate of Rachel's who knows but citing the fact that she, Alison Rose, was removed as CEO because she's a woman, diminished Rachel Reeves a little in my eyes.

Following on from the appalling PO debacle I get sick of this lauded elite and the way they sometimes know about wrong doings, but leave it under the radar or blatantly lie. Politicians should always be there to represent the people not overpaid and often useless public figures.

Just more defensive and partisan statements Doodledog
I don’t care what she earns either but as shadow Chancellor I expect her to be well paid, and am guessing her husband is well paid too.In other words she can manage financially.
She will very shortly be living in Downing St!
Your excuses for her silly statement are an insult to those, including me, who really do run a household on the tightest budget imaginable.

The full interview is on YouTube. RR has committed to spending only the amount received in tax receipts. Money coming in must equal money going out. How do we feel about that?

Perhaps this lady could consider down sizing if things are as tight financially as she said, or another means of 'drawing horns in'? There are plenty! I speak from experience so could offer tips!!

That sounds like a hint that tax hikes will be deemed necessary Ronib.

GSM the tax burden is already unsustainable? I am beginning to worry for young families.

It is for many. Starmer has said, I believe, that he won’t be looking to raise taxes or introduce a wealth tax so if what RR says is correct, that can only mean little spending, which won’t go down well in some areas. It doesn’t sound as though she and Starmer are singing from the same hymn sheet.

ronib

The full interview is on YouTube. RR has committed to spending only the amount received in tax receipts. Money coming in must equal money going out. How do we feel about that?

The UK is not a household. The State issues our money, either directly by state spending into the economy or by quantitative easing, whereby the Bank of England created the money to buy up bonds with the objective of releasing more money into the economy.

The state does not have to 'earn' money before it can spend it, it can put its 'created' money into the economy, where it will circulate and drive economic activity. Taxation drains excess money from the economy. Without taxation there would be too much money around, which would cause inflation, even hyperinflation in some circumstances.

There will always be less money 'coming in' than there is money going out because people tend to save spare money if they don't need or want to spend it all. 'Balancing the books' in accountancy terms just means accounting for all the money flowing in and out. It shows if there is a surplus or a deficit. Deficits matter to everybody except a state, because no-one except the state can create money, if they did it would be called counterfeiting and would be illegal. But states have to create money because if they didn't there wouldn't be enough money in circulation to accommodate a growing population.

There is far more money in circulation now than there was 50 years ago; if there wasn't everyone would have a smaller and smaller share of the finite amount of money available. Just imagine if only the money available for the post war UK population of 45 million had to be 'shared' among out current population of 66+ million. The extra money needed has been mainly put into the economy by the state.

The only way a state can run a surplus without impoverishing its population would be for it to take in more money from foreign trade than it pays out in state spending. As this is far from the case for most countries the state has to run a deficit because of the fact that people save, spend money on imports or just on foreign holidays... Running a deficit is not bad unless it leads to excessive inflation ( a modest rate of inflation isn't harmful, as we know from years of inflation in low single figures).

This a basic, simplistic explanation of a very complex topic.

The real issue is how money is distributed within the population; in our current economic situation money tends to flow upwards, hugely enriching certain parts of the population and impoverishing others. If one thinks that that is not a bad thing, fair enough, but if one believes that distribution should be more equable, that there shouldn't be large numbers of people living in poverty in a supposedly 'wealthy' country it is a situation to be deplored...

I thought you would say that! Perhaps you should give some lessons to RR.

ronib

GSM the tax burden is already unsustainable? I am beginning to worry for young families.

The tax burden for some, allied to inflation, is unsustainable. For others it's easily sustainable. In fact, some could be subject to more taxation without it materially affecting their way of life.

Germanshepherdsmum

I thought you would say that! Perhaps you should give some lessons to RR.

There are plenty of well qualified economists who could do that, even more orthodox ones.

For example:

mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2024/

Maizie D completely agree.

Quote didn’t appear so 13.38 comment refers.

ronib

Maizie D completely agree.

It's nice to agree from time to time, ronib 😂

I can remember being a f/t teacher and my husband earned a decent salary and having no money at the end of the month, no I wasn't frittering it away on booze and fags, I was paying for 4 kids at different life stages - music lessons, sports, clothes, uni costs, yes I had a mortgage, a cleaner and ran a car- shock horror so I wasn't down on my uppers, but these helped me run my life at that time. RR will have more expenses than I had - what Im guessing she meant was that the money doesn't stretch as far as it did even a couple of years ago with the huge rises in energy costs, mortgages, travel, food etc .

I decided to check ona Tory MP. Lee Anderson was hte first name tat I recognised so here's his list of interests.

£100k per annum from GB News for 8 hours per week as a presenter

£53k for helping with his local campaigning

1 hospitality ticket for England vs the All Blacks £1950.

Is the above acceptable?

Maizie I think that RR has to talk as though govt spending is similar to managing a household because so many believe that it is, regardless of how often you, me and others explain that it isn't.

The Tories are gearing up with the dirty tricks. Apparently they have a team investigating all the cases that Starmer dealt with when he was D of PP. Don't ask for a link - my DH told me about this before Christmas and he can't remember where he read it.

People are still referring to the financial situation when Brown lost the election. They still believe that there was no money because of the note left behind for the new Tory Chancellor. Some of them are really silly if they believe that. How do they think we were the 6th? richest country in the world if there was no money?

Of course it is, difference being that this person doesn't pretend that he can't live within this budget. R R does, and if true, instead of moaning , should make a few economies like we all do under similar circumstances.