Rachel Reeves may finally be seeing the light (Image: PA)
Is starting to see the light? It’s a bit late, of course, after one of the worst budgets in modern history. But her belated recognition that growth trumps net zero, which Labour has repeatedly told us is of paramount importance, is to be welcomed.
She’s also realised that the country needs bigger airports with more runways and that public spending must be controlled. These are signs that she at least understands what a complete horlicks she and her boss have made of everything.
By promoting airport expansion, she has horrified some big beasts on her own side, particularly and Sadiq Khan. Well, she has the power to muscle past them. is a different matter. Because until now he’s passionately opposed a third runway at Heathrow. He’s now wobbling and refusing to commit, which is hardly surprising as it’s more difficult to name issues on which he hasn’t flip flopped than those on which he has. I reckon we can expect another U-turn from the flipflopper-in-chief shortly.
Well, at least he’ll be flip flopping to the side of common sense. Last weekend, I flew in and out of Schiphol, Amsterdam, with its six runways. It’s obviously mad that Britain, four times the size of the Netherlands, has Heathrow with only two runways, and Gatwick with only one operating. I was in favour of a major new airport in the Thames Estuary, first proposed in the 1940s, believe it or not, and seriously considered again more than a decade ago. If we’d started building in 2013, it could be operating soon. Britain, sadly, is incapable of forward-thinking common sense.
But we need more capacity, and if that means Heathrow and Gatwick, so be it. And it’s fascinating to see how lefty Labourites like Reeves, all too happy to virtue-signal in opposition, change their minds when the harsh realities of government and stagnation confront them.
It must now be dawning on Reeves that whatever Britain does on net zero, such as heat pumps, wind farms, climate change levies and electric cars, will make negligible difference to the planet as a whole. So, when asked to choose between the economy and net zero, the economy will win every time, especially since her very survival at the Exchequer depends on it. As for Britain’s silly self-imposed legal obligation to achieve net zero by 2050, I doubt whether Reeves cares. She’ll be long into retirement.
That’s also why she’s now planning big spending cuts, which are absolutely inevitable in March unless she wants to break her own rules by borrowing and taxing even more. Yes, it’ll make her party squeal like a piglet, but she’ll only be doing what any chancellor would do to rescue the country from the mess her budget created.
Is Reeves slowly realising that taxing the private sector yet more to pile money into the public sector, including a great wodge to striking train drivers, actually stops the economy growing? Who knew? I’m not an HBOS economist (mind you, nor was Reeves) but I could have told her that for nothing.
While we’re at it, the government is also now realising that those evil were right all along, and that we need to get tough on excess regulation, tough on benefits cheats, and start tackling the ballooning number of people claiming sickness benefit, apparently too ill to work at all. There are a staggering 2.7 million of them.
The trouble for Labour is that when forced by reality to act sensibly, it can only bring itself to do so guiltily, half-heartedly and apologetically. And when it comes to the election, the voters will think that they’d rather order the genuine article than a flimsy flip-flopping fake.