So many aspects of the state where Labour in opposition convinced themselves that the fundamentals were fine, the Conservatives were just shit penny-pinching managers, and once good common-sense people were in charge and a wee bit more money everything would work fine. Alas, reality is more complex

The Labour Chancellor has delivered a Budget whose headroom is still small, and is based on a series of optimistic assumptions and tax rises in an election year, and your story is...litigating which one of the chess competitions in the 90s was the *real* under-14 champion? Really?

Think the actual comments here are both more varied and more realistic than the subhead. Plenty of recognition of the need to increase short-medium term fiscal headroom (including via overall tax increases) and restore political credibility after recent kite-flying and then abrupt reverses.

I don’t really disagree. Feel like a proper reform of property tax/council tax could raise proper money.
Whereas this is a lot of burned political capital for maybe £600m a year. Essentially a public finances rounding error.

Are you perhaps assuming (or just hoping) the current PLP would nominate challengers (leader and / or chancellor) with more political and financial sense than the incumbents? That seems a bit of stretch, tbh.

neither nice nor nasty, just reality. this is another reason why not raising income tax is a mistake, it means higher borrowing costs for investment and therefore lower growth. a simple truth that Starmer & Reeves are short-sightedly ignoring.

“We’re getting the Miliband back together”

if it wasn't for the fact they can still make this worse, I'd be tempted by the 0.5% 2061 🚀, currently -3% on the day. but they definitely can still make this worse, just by being themselves. if you're a foreign investor in Gilts, why on earth would you step in now ahead of the Autumn Statement ?

Turns out tax tapas is not quite as appetising as Reeves was imagining *shocked face*